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kithtaehyung · 2 years

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drabble: you’re next (3tan) (m) | myg

drabble: you’re next | part one pairing: 3tan!yoongi x reader(f) series: three tangerines | fall drabbles masterlist | submit! rating/genre: m (18+) ; fluff , smut ; brother’s best friend au, implied age gap au summary: after you get the texts from yoongi, you continue to keep goading him. little do you know that he’s still at the festival. because your brother is the only one that left. note: so… this is part 2 to the first fall drabble apple bobbing bc of this post. y’all are spoiled af what am i gonna do with you all lolll note 2: if you haven’t read the three tangerines series yet, i highly encourage you to! the side characters would make a lot more sense :D also this is unedited LOL warnings: language, dirty talk, fingering, tae is best boy, oral (f rec), haunted house, yoongi on the phone lol i’m sorry, spanking, edging, yoongi is rude?? drop date: october 13th, 2022, 9:07pm est word count: 4.5k lolll

Yoongi [8:20pm]: You’re next :))

Shaken, you stash your phone, a large hand clapping on your shoulder the second thing that makes you yelp.

Tae’s concern is ruined by a giggle, “You okay? This room’s empty.”

“Says you,” you scoff, “Y’all just went too fast.”

He looks around, taking in the boarded up walls and funhouse mirrors shrouded in dark cloth. More random roars and screams echo throughout the building, but neither of you are deterred.

“Well. Unlike you, I’m not scared of my reflection.”

Ass! Feigning a pout, you charge ahead of his laughs, “Yeah, whatever. Let’s go.”

“What did he send you?”

“Huh?”

Taehyung easily catches up to your still form with confident strides, pointing at your bag. “I saw that,” he reveals through a smirk. “No way it could’ve been anyone else.”

Damn it.

The group behind you sounds close, so you and Tae make your way through a hallway of webs while you admit,

“He sent a fucking photo.”

“Of himself?”

“Yeah.”

Taehyung brushes a dangling cobweb as he has to crouch, voice is so deep that you have to lean in to hear, “That’s actually shocking.”

“I know!” you exclaim in a whisper. “That’s why I’m slightly freaked out.”

“Did he say anything else?”

“He—Fuck!”

The puff of air that shoots right into your side makes you collide into your friend, and he catches you with strong arms while blowing out amusement.

“Shut up.”

“I’ve never seen you this jumpy!” He lets out another laugh as you leave the air-filled corridor and enter another dark room. “It’s so cute.”

“I just. He just.” You sigh, fishing out your phone to show him the thread because you can’t bring yourself to repeat it out loud.

And as soon as Taehyung sees both the picture and the text, his face releases a whole flurry of butterflies across your chest.

“That’s the scariest thing I’ve seen all day.”

“See? What the fuck.”

“You’re in more trouble than I thought.”

You groan, pocketing your phone and hearing Yuri’s scream a few rooms away, the telltale giggles following right after.

Dom also cusses so loud that both you and Taehyung burst into laughter yourselves.

Maybe Yoongi’s texts showed up on their phones, too. Since that’s the only frightening thing you can think of right now.

“What’re you gonna say?”

“Absolutely nothing,” you claim, eyes darting to the hisses and squawks around the glowing area. There’s no way you can respond right now, especially since he’s walking around with your brother.

“Why not?”

“You know exactly why!”

“Damn,” Taehyung comments, drawing out the syllable to try and guilt you. “He eyefucks you and you leave him hanging…”

“Tae!”

“I’m sorry, did we look at the same picture? He even—”

You launch yourself in an attempt to cover his mouth, but he easily swats your arms away.

“He”—a muffled giggle—“Even gave you tongue—”

Your groan is more like a cry this time as you shut your eyes in defeat, the picture already burned so hard into your vision that you still see it.

Because fucking hell, Yoongi knows what he did.

Footsteps and chatter approach from behind again, so you and Tae move forward while steam escapes your ears.

“Just send one thing.”

“No.”

“He clearly sent that without remorse,” he notes, and the bubbling sounds of a cauldron are all you get in warning before a humongous witch charges out of nowhere.

Shrieking.

Both you and Tae yell in response, amused at how smushed together and bent backwards you are when the worker retreats into her station.

“I did not expect her to be seven feet tall.”

“I’m gonna ask her out.”

After you head into the next room—adrenaline spiked into the ceiling—your friend reminds you of his persistence.

“Humor me,” he starts, and you tilt your head with lips pursed. “He’d lose his shit!”

“What do I even send?”

“Whatever’s in your heart.”

“Wow.”

“Or your p—”

“Stop.”

While he laughs, you spot a tiny sign hovering over a dark door on your right.

Bathroom, you assume? Maybe for costume changes.

“Okay, fine,” you relent, taking out your phone and knowing this could be a super bad idea. “But I’m only sending this because I’m tired of you.”

“Whatever. You love being goaded.”

Staring at your thread, you walk forward with tiny steps, wondering what the hell to say.

His picture is certainly not helping.

The only thing you can come up with is your default. The same damn concept you fell back on at the booth. Because if your earlier taunt resulted in whatever fresh hell this was, you’re highly interested in seeing what your text will bring.

Huffing a frown at Taehyung, you show him what you wrote.

And he gives you a triumphant smirk in return.

You [8:30pm]: do it u won’t🙄

After you get through the haunted house, the street is a lot more crowded, with lights illuminating everyone’s heads and distinct festival sounds embedding in your ears.

Since all of you decide that the adrenaline and scare-induced laughter will quickly turn into hunger, you head to one of the food stalls calling your noses. Which is great timing because you need a good distraction.

Because ever since you sent the text, you’ve been checking your phone periodically, both relieved and anxious that Yoongi hasn’t replied. Like your mind can’t decide which outcome is better.

It’s only after you order and stand next to Tae that you feel a message come through.

And suddenly your bag weighs a ton.

You give your friend a look before you check it, and he watches as you clutch your phone a tad tighter.

Yoongi [8:45pm]: Wanna bet?

You [8:45pm]: omg u know u can’t

Yoongi [8:45pm]: Bet I can

What the hell? If he’s around your brother being this brazen then you’re full-on dreaming.

The wind picks up, and you shiver as you type your next message.

You [8:47pm]: ???

Yoongi [8:48pm]: He left lol. I’m with Jimin now

Oh.

Your brother left?

And Yoongi stayed?

…That changes things.

You [8:50pm]: just y’all?

Yoongi [8:52pm]: Yeah

Yoongi [8:53pm]: Rather it be just us though :\

Your phone damn near falls out of your hand.

Because this cannot be happening.

What kind of alternate reality did you step into? Why is he suddenly so forthcoming you want to hurl your device into the nearest bin?

Whatever it is, he needs to quit before you run out of air.

Humming, you grapple onto reality before diving into conversation with Tae.

“It’s just him and Jimin now.”

“Now what?”

“I dunno!” you whisper, appalled that he’s left you out to dry in the cold. “You’re the one that put me up to this.”

He laughs. “I just wanted to see what he’d say. I didn’t expect to get this far.”

Groaning, you look down at your texts, wondering what the hell to do.

You [8:55pm]: just us?🥺

Yoongi [8:56pm]: Acting cute won’t work today, doll

Yoongi [8:57pm]: Not after what you pulled

Well.

Shit.

Everyone else at this festival be damned.

You [9:00pm]: i don’t recall a thing

Yoongi [9:05pm]: Uh huh

Yoongi [9:05pm]: You’re just making it worse for yourself

As your other friends get their food, you watch them go to a table before you sigh,

“Wish I could see him.”

The words come out so naturally that you even surprise yourself.

And Taehyung’s smile can be heard in his voice when he replies,

“Then do that.”

“Not here,” you mutter. “There’s way too many people around.”

“So?” When you shoot him a rueful look, he cocks a brow. “Everyone’s just enjoying themselves. I can sit with them if you wanna find him.”

Your heart skips right into Tae’s hands.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Keep it quick, though,” he says, looking towards the table your friends huddle around, eating and finally quiet. “Even though they look beat. They could still be down for stuff.”

“We stayed up so late last night,” you explain through a smile. “Movie marathons are no joke at Reia’s place.”

“Wow, thanks for the invite.”

“We thought—Well, I thought you were busy.”

“Mm. Perhaps.”

You don’t know what you’d do without Taehyung in your life. If only you were able to pack him in your car to keep during your university days.

But alas. He’s here now. And being the most supportive of your sneaky ways as he can be.

After you go up to get your food, you hold the container in one hand while messaging. “Lemme see what he says.”

You [9:07pm]: prove it then

It doesn’t take long for him to answer.

Yoongi [9:09pm]: You sure?

You [9:09pm]: i got 15 min tops

Yoongi [9:10pm]: Lmaoo that’s plenty

Yoongi [9:11pm]: Call me when you dip

Can he get any more insufferable today?

That’s plenty? For what!

Nerves buzz as you and Tae make a plan before you walk off, hoping at least Dominique understands where you’re going.

Well. You’re gonna get an earful later either way. May as well make this fifteen minutes count.

But when you’re a safe distance away in the crowd, you ring him up, wondering what could possibly await you on the other side of the line.

“Hi.”

“Hey. Where are you?”

“By the food trucks.”

“Head towards the haunted house. There’s gonna be a churros stall on your left.”

A churros stall? You didn’t expect that.

“Okay.”

“You want anything?”

“No, it’s okay! I just got food.”

“K. We’ll be here.”

How you can instantly spot Yoongi in a crowd is always gonna be a mystery.

Even with his hood up and draped in dark colors, your eyes zero right onto him, watching as he grabs something from a vendor that turns incredibly shy.

And Yoongi swivels in time to see your smile of understanding, too far away to catch the way you cease breathing.

Which is good. He doesn’t need his ego inflated even more.

“Hi.”

“Hey.”

Looking around, you take in the rest of the line and wonder, “Where’s Jimin?”

“Getting something else.”

Oh.

He leads you around the corner, settling into a space between the stalls only occupied by trash cans and trodden leaves. A tiny nook where you can pretend that you’re just hanging out with Yoongi like it’s the most normal thing.

And suddenly it’s your favorite area of the festival.

“Those smell so good,” you notice, mouth salivating as you lean on the warm side of the churro booth.

“Want some?”

“Nah. This was expensive enough.” Grabbing the wrapping, you look around at the people passing by.

Did you say no because you feel jittery enough standing here with him? Maybe. Because the butterflies in your stomach aren’t just from getting to spend alone time outside. Their wings are still dusting bits of paranoia along your rib cage.

“Suit yourself,” Yoongi tuts, getting a full bite while observing the night crowd. The crunch is enough to make you regret ordering the subpar meal you just paid for.

After the two of you get a few bites in, the sounds of cooking and games and voices fill the silence.

Before Yoongi disrupts with two words.

“Gimme some.”

“What?”

“Your food. Feed me some.”

You gawk, almost dropping the bite in your hand. “Umm, no?”

“Come on,” he persists with a lift of his cocky chin. “No one’ll notice.”

“Are you serious?” Alarmed, you swing your neck around to see if there’s anyone you suddenly know, senses on high alert. “People could see us—”

He.

Just took what was in your hand.

With his mouth.

As you still feel the cold air where his lips touched your fingers, he swallows in triumph. “Said you were next.”

This entire night is a fever dream.

You don’t even know what to say, much less do. Your head is literally quite empty, and any brain cell you can find seems to be focused on one thing and one thing only.

“Yoongi, I swear…”

“What?” He laughs. “Thought I was talking about something else?”

“I…” Blinking, you look at his unfinished churros. “Didn’t know what to think, honestly.”

He hands you his container while taking yours. “Didn’t even send a pic back,” he points out, and you think you hear a smidge of pout in his words.

Of course you weren’t gonna. But you only offer an excuse, “It was dark in there.”

“Just one,” he says, leaning onto the stall next to you. “Just once.”

After a moment of silence, he tacks on,

“Of your ass.”

“Yoongi.”

He’s laughing! You’re drowning in complete shock and suffering and he’s full on elated.

You’ve never seen him like this. Even if you were mad at him, you’d still smile. “What’s up with you today?”

Is it the season? The weather change? There has to be something about today that’s responsible for his mood. And you want to thank whatever it is until it gets tired of you.

Yoongi just looks at you with creased eyes before huffing. “You really got me at that damn booth.”

Oh. That’s not possible.

There’s no way all of this is because of something you said.

You look away with a shy curve of your lips. “Yeah, well. You got me, too.” Turning, you poke his chest with a nail. “So this isn’t over.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

You expected something completely different to happen in these fifteen minutes, but you’re enjoying yourself as is, just hanging out and eating outside.

And Yoongi’s the happiest you’ve ever seen him.

Any amount of time to witness him like this is already worth it.

Your bag buzzes, and both you and Yoongi look down at the sound.

Taeee😪 [9:17pm]: Take your time. They left and I’m gonna do the haunted house with Jimin.

Wait.

They left?

How the hell did Tae swing that?

You [9:18pm]: they left??

Taeee😪 [9:17pm]: Yeah. I told them I’d take you back to Reia’s when we were done here.

Ten-thousand lunches.

You owe him ten-thousand, very good lunches.

Every single thought in your body enlarges, crowding you to the brim with excitement and outright giddiness.

Time. You get so much more time.

But the logical side of your brain is quick to remind you: you’re still out in public. There’s a chance that people can still see you out with Yoongi, especially the people looking to hang out with him, too.

All this opportunity, but what do you do? What even can you do?

“Need to go?”

You quickly tear away from your phone, and the guarded look on Yoongi’s face makes you feel the guiltiest you’ve felt in awhile. Because you’re positive your expression is giving away the conflict raging through your brain.

“No, I…”

You didn’t like that look. Not one bit.

But what do you do? What can you and Yoongi… do…

Looking back down at your text, you realize.

The answer is right there.

Immediately, you snap your gaze back to him and blurt, “Do the haunted house with me.”

“Huh?”

“Or, us. Jimin and Tae are going.”

Yoongi switches from wary to defeated when he sighs. “Don’t make me do that.”

“Why not?”

When he looks away, his lips slip into a curve of regret. “Cus fuck that. But I’m gonna if you want me to.”

Your heart throbs.

As much as you wanna see him go through the house, the ultimate plan is something else entirely. But that’ll be kept under wraps to keep it a surprise. “I’ll protect you,” is all you decide to pledge.

“I wasn’t kidding. I’ll swing.”

“No need! It’s not even a scary one.”

He gives you a look of disbelief. “If you’re lying I’m leaving your ass.”

“Rude? Trust me.”

You await his answer, not wanting to push too hard if he really doesn’t wanna do it. Obviously, you don’t wanna unearth any potential trauma or whatever. You’re totally fine coming up with something else.

But he just aims slitted eyes your way. “Fine.”

Laughing at his fake leer, you tell him he’ll be alright.

If you can get him into the haunted house, you’re golden.

All you gotta do is get him past the witch.

After twenty minutes—thanks to a Jimin that roped you into the front of the line—you’re almost there.

But the journey proves just as naughty as your destination.

“Yoongi!” you whisper, moving your ass away from another playful grab. “Stop!”

His laughs in the dark are much more potent. “Why.”

“What if someone sees?”

“All they’d do is agree with me,” Yoongi confidently answers in a low tone, and you can only see a sliver of his side profile thanks to his hood still up. “It’s too nice in that skirt.”

If only you remembered the webbed hallway as well as you recalled the hidden bathroom’s location. You ended up getting the same puff of air on your ear, which caused you to flinch sideways into him.

But unlike Taehyung who just laughed, Yoongi seized the opportunity to also hold you against him before letting go, slapping your ass to move you forward.

And paired with the darkness, your weak scoldings have only made him bolder since then. You yourself almost break before you even make it to the witch’s room.

But you hold on, cackling as much as the towering woman yourself when you see Yoongi’s fists challenge her rapid approach. When you feel him clutch your arms while trying to suppress a grin, you only laugh even harder, loving how unfiltered his actions are.

It’s almost like…

There it is. The tiny bathroom sign behind a wall of curtains in the next room.

Yoongi’s already surveying the dark for another scare, completely oblivious to your devious plan. “I swear if there’s something in here, too—”

“Come here,” you whisper, grabbing his hand.

He only looks at the contact before eyeing you, and you bite your lip to keep yourself in check, not saying another word while leading him to the hidden door.

When he catches on, the look he gives you is devilish.

“Nu uh.”

Your curve only gets wider as you check the narrow space between the curtains at the door, parting the heavy material enough to get by and head into the empty restroom.

Aside from knocking on Yoongi’s door and asking him to fuck you, this is the second most daring thing you’ve done in awhile. And your stomach has almost the same type of twists as before. Just minus the fear of rejection and broken self-confi—

Closing the door behind him in a rush, Yoongi twists your body to pin you against the nearest wall, not even bothering to turn on the light.

Which makes his low, gravelly question twenty times worse,

“You plan this?”

Heart pulsing wild, you squish your lips before admitting, “Maybe.”

“That’s hot as fuck.”

Your mouth is smushed as you bang against the plaster, and you run your fingers along his neck while licking cinnamon and sugar off his tongue.

“Someone might use it, though,” you warn between hard kisses. “We can’t be here long.”

He wedges a thigh in between your legs before giving your side a spank. “Then hurry up. No shy shit this time.”

Moan muffled, you roll against him, the thrill of being exactly where you shouldn’t be fueling your thrusts.

Because you shouldn’t have done this.

Oh god, why the hell did you sneak in here employees could come in at any se—

“Is that all you got, baby girl?”

Fuck, his voice got a lot closer to your ear.

When you swallow, he continues with an insult,

“What a shame. Thought I taught you better than that.”

“Fuck—”

Yoongi grabs the back of your neck before devouring your lips again, tongue flicking yours while a hand wanders along your leg, your side, your ass. When he clutches what he can in his palm, he guides you in a rhythm that matches the thrusts of his mouth, and you practically melt right onto his jeans.

“There you go,” he praises, chuckling right after. “Goddamn, I wanna taste you.”

His name escapes you in a gasp. Because you feel like you’re already pushing it as is. Shit, you need to wrap this the hell up.

Shivering with nerves, you whisper, “I don’t think we can.”

If only your body followed the same rules as your brain. It’s only staying still as Yoongi loops a finger into the hem of your bottoms, shivering when he tugs you forward, and responding when he claims your lips again.

“We can.”

“You sure?”

“This won’t take long.”

His last kiss steals not only your breath, but any other arguments on your lips.

“Okay,” you whisper, hearing the sounds of the haunted house right outside the door. “Okay.”

“Now cover your mouth, doll,” he orders while dropping to the ground. Swinging a shaking leg over his shoulder, he sounds frighteningly close to your soaked panties. “You’re gonna scream.”

“We—”

Your only other warning is a finger shifting your thong—hot, determined tongue replacing it while a rough hand holds your leg in place.

Holy fuck.

You buck forward on contact, yell pushing through your fingers as a strong hum instead.

And he doesn’t say anything else as he feasts, licking along your cunt and grabbing the side of your ass with his free hand. Darkness takes away your vision but heightens everything else, and you’ve never heard dirty sounds so crystal clear.

He’s right. This isn’t gonna take you much longer.

It’s more than obvious he’s done this countless times before.

Your legs dissolve into jelly when he sucks, but you feel your knees give out when the lightest of kisses are planted against your nub. Again. And again.

When did your fingers get tangled in his hair? When did your leg lock so hard you don’t feel it anymore? You don’t know. You don’t care. All you know is to rock forward, controlled by the single string that is his tongue.

Until he adds two knuckles, rubbing them against your clit and making you flinch.

A dark rumble thrums against your cunt, and you feel his body shift to… a standing position?

No no no.

“That’s all you get, baby girl.”

“What?”

“You said we had to hurry.”

“You said it wouldn’t take long!”

“Did I lie?”

“Yoongi,” you breathe out, ragged. “I’m so close, fuck.”

“Damn.” He brushes wet knuckles against your lips, and you groan at the taste. “That sucks.”

“Yoongi, I swear to god.”

“You said we had to go.”

“I… You…” Your cunt is throbbing so hard you feel like crying. “Don’t make me do it myself.”

He gets in close, heady scent of his breath pooling across your face. “Poor baby,” he teases, one finger jolting you upward with a single, soft touch to your slit. When he slaps your cunt instead of anything else, you whine before he slips vengeance in your ear,

“You get me wet, I do the same. It’s only fair.”

Your fingers find his sleeves immediately. “This isn’t fair and you know it.”

“You’re the one that brought me in here,” he parries, and you know for a fact he’s smirking. “And I told you it wasn’t over.”

“Please.” You try your absolute hardest to tighten your weak hold. “We don’t have time to fight.”

“Fight about what?”

“Make me come, baby,” you plead with your whole chest, not wanting to play a single game anymore. “I’ll do anything, just—”

A knuckle grazes your clit, and your moan isn’t stifled by a hand this time.

Oh shit that had to be too loud—

A large palm covers your mouth before two fingers slip between your folds, and your second scream is thoroughly muffled.

“You’re lucky I fucking love when you come,” Yoongi rasps in your ear, his fingers hitting spots that light the room with stars. “That’s what’s unfair.”

Your eyes squeeze shut while you thrust against his digits, feeling the end fast approaching and outright yelling into his warm hand.

“Better hurry, doll.” His breath comes out in a slow laugh. “Unless you wanna get caught. Is that what you want?”

You shake your head, knowing that deep down, for some reason, the very idea makes your cunt throb even harder.

“No?”

Another shake.

“Then fucking come.”

His fingers lodge into your folds, spreading you open and causing your walls to flutter like mad.

And your body obeys at once, head thrown back and limbs locking, plaster and Yoongi’s fingers your only purchase from sinking to the ground. Swells of pleasure almost taken from you gush onto his digits, and his hum teeters on a growl against your cheek.

“So perfect.”

The dark continues to heighten every sense you have, and you turn your head to capture his lips before gasping for air.

Your pulses are still deep when he removes his fingers. And you already miss them as you try to straighten, legs wobbly and hands steadying on his arms.

His teasing laugh makes you pout. “You good?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Then let’s go.”

You feel him move away from you, and you decide then and there that you want more.

A lot more.

Panicked, yank him away from the door, reaching for his face and pulling him onto your lips. Bold. Risky. So unlike you.

But the dark heightens your courage as much as your senses. And something about him only focusing on you makes you want him more than ever.

Yoongi’s just as rushed this time. A myriad of flavors smears across your mouth, and his hot breaths sink wonderfully into your skin. Seconds, minutes, years. It doesn’t matter how much time you have now.

This tiny stretch of time has been a miracle, and you wanna stretch it out as long as you possibly can.

When he finally pulls away, he tells you he didn’t think you had this in you. When you admit that you just really missed him, he repeats the sentiment right back.

And when you tell him you have a bit more time left, he suggests that you all swing by another prize booth.

“What, you wanna win me something, too?”

“Nah.” He huffs a laugh, and his next sentence earns him a playful shove,

“I just wanna watch you lose.”

fin. :)

A/N: so... yes. this was a 4.5k word drabble. bc some people wouldn’t stop talking and being cute with each other and someone else just had to keep being a good ass friend!!! anyway. hope y’all enjoyed! there are so many other drabbles to come during the fall season, so get ready. i would love to know what y’all thought about this one! any feedback would be much loved :D ++ feedback box: ⇥ of course, any reblogs/comments/messages are appreciated! ⇥ for the ones that aren’t okay with reblogging with a review, commenting on this, or sending a message, i went ahead and made another anonymous form where you can send in what you think! ⇥ no emails collected, no need to put in a username. it’s literally just a feedback dropbox :D ⇥ here! ++ ⇥ masterlist

#🍎🍎🍎 pt 2 is here sry for the wait omg #bts fic #bts imagines #bts reactions #yoongi fluff #yoongi smut #bts #yoongi #bangtanbathhouse #bangtansorciere #bangtanarmynet #*latest #*ryenfictalk #ryenwrites #*3tanfall #yoongi x reader #bts fanfic #yoongi fic

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 4 months

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The Sussexes🍋 have delivered little since signing w/the steamer in 2020

"Meghan and Harry’s $100 Million Netflix Deal Is a Hollywood Miss | Emily Smith Feb 28, 2024

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s lucrative Spotify deal fell apart in 2023, Bill Simmons, The Ringer’s founder and managing director, was incensed.

“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation,” Simmons, the head of podcast innovation and monetization at Spotify, which owns The Ringer, said on his self-titled show. “‘The F–king Grifters.’ That’s the podcast we should have launched with them.”

Simmons’ astonishing comments followed the collapse of the Montecito, California-based Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s $20 million deal with Spotify, signed in December of 2020. They delivered just 12 episodes of Markle’s “Archetypes” podcast.

But the Spotify contract paled in comparison to the estimated $100 million Netflix agreed in September 2020 to pay them, a deal which produced a documentary series “Harry & Meghan” two years later — and little else since then.

Aside from the docuseries, the exclusive Netflix deal produced the “Heart of Invictus” in August 2023, which covered Prince Harry’s games for wounded warriors, and “Live to Lead,” about inspiring world leaders and featured interviews with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem. That series premiered on Dec. 31, 2022.

Unproduced is an animated series created by Markle titled “Pearl,” which Netflix axed in May 2022 as part of a series of cutbacks. There is little else close to production.

What’s gone wrong? TheWrap spoke to multiple insiders who say the Sussexes have worn out their welcome in Hollywood with an iron-fisted desire for control, combined with a lack of experience. A revolving door of executives have departed the couple’s production company, Archewell, in the past two years while a long list of exhausted agents, producers and other industry veterans have stamped it with a “life’s too short” reputation.

The Sussexes founded Archewell Productions in the name of their four-year-old son, Archie. It includes their nonprofit charitable foundation, plus a for-profit arm focused on media projects.

“Everything with them was fraught and complicated because they wanted complete control,” one Hollywood creative who has worked with them, who declined to be identified, told TheWrap.

Another insider with knowledge of the management of Archewell agreed, saying the couple have proven to be stubborn to the point of alienating others.

“It appears that they just want what they want and won’t take advice,” the insider said.

“Taking on Harry and Meghan was a great coup for Netflix,” public relations and image guru Mark Borkowski told TheWrap. “It probably got a lot of eyeballs and subscriptions, but they [Harry and Markle] never delivered.”

Borkowski added that the clients he works with are closely watching their budgets and costs, but, given the former royals’ lifestyle, “The amount of income this pair has to raise is enormous.”

An insider with knowledge of the Netflix deal with Archewell said it is an “overhead agreement,” meaning not all the money would go to the Sussexes, but it also helps fund their staff, office and development fees.

Archewell and the Sussexes declined to comment for this story.

The former royal couple were initially a hot property. Before signing with Netflix, they also had discussions with Apple, Disney and NBCUniversal, The New York Times first reported. Meghan previously narrated a documentary about elephants for Disney+, and Harry collaborated with Oprah Winfrey on a docuseries about mental health for Apple TV+.

The “Harry & Meghan” docuseries, directed by Liz Garbus, was a legitimate hit, setting a record for the biggest debut for a Netflix documentary with a total 81.6 million hours watched on its first four days of availability, amounting to more than 28 million households watching.

The series was an intimate glimpse inside the Sussexes’ marriage and made headlines for their criticism of the British royal family for failing to support them, including allegations of racism and a narrative that the couple was essentially forced to leave England for the U.S.

But production was apparently difficult. One individual with knowledge of the series said dealing with the former royal couple was a “nightmare” as they were fiercely protective of their story.

“Harry and Meghan made the collaborative process very hard, to the point that there was no collaboration at all,” the insider said.

Other projects have not gotten off the ground.

Netflix and Markle announced “Pearl” with much fanfare in 2021. The animated series — co-executive produced by Markle and David Furnish — was to center on the adventures of a 12-year-old girl who finds inspiration in a variety of influential women throughout history. Netflix canceled it the following year while it was still in the development stage.

There have been reports Netflix bought the romantic Carley Fortune book “Meet Me at the Lake” for $1 million for the pair to produce into a movie. Other plans included a TV drama feminist retelling of Miss Havisham from Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” and a documentary about Prince Harry traveling solo in Africa. But these all seem far from getting off the ground.

Another Archewell insider told TheWrap that “Meet Me at the Lake” was “in active development,” but has not yet been cast. And Harry’s trip to Africa has not been scheduled. Some projects will be announced in the next few months, the insider added.

“They have a couple of unscripted things they’re working on,” Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria said at the “Next on Netflix” event on Feb. 1 of Markle and Harry, including “a movie in development” and “a [scripted] series.”

Bajaria emphasized that these projects were still in “early development,” which raises the question what exactly has been going on between Archewell and Netflix? COVID struck at the start of their deal, Markle went on maternity leave and then the writers’ and actors’ strikes halted production for much of last year. But with all that, it is it is remarkable how little the couple have actually made work for the streamer.

Reps for Netflix, which has also pulled back on its TV and film expenditure during the work stoppages, declined to comment. Harry and Markle do not have guild relationships so any non-U.S. productions would not have been affected.

Markle recently announced she’s joining forces with Lemonada Media — whose tag line is “Making Life Suck 🍋 Less” — for a new podcast, and it will also rerun her “Archetypes” podcast. The company, founded in 2019 by Jessica Cordova Kramer and Stephanie Wittels Wachs, is small and is not expected to be a big pay day for Markle.

The actress is still earning residuals from “Suits,” which recently found an entirely new audience on Netflix.

Archewell turnover: Meanwhile, there has been a dramatic executive turnover at Archewell — particularly those negotiating TV, film and media deals. Mandana Dayani, a human rights activist and business executive, was the president of Archewell from May 2021 to December 2022 and stepped down just days before Harry and Markle’s docuseries aired, with no reason offered.

The company also lost its BAFTA-winning head of content Ben Browning in January 2023 after his contract expired. Browning, who worked on “Harry & Meghan” and the “Archetypes” podcast, returned to his former employer, FilmNation Entertainment as president of production.

Bennett Levine, their production manager, also left in January, as did Rebecca Sananes, Markle and Harry’s head of audio who left to work as a freelance writer and podcast producer after the “Archetypes” podcasts were concluded.

The company has also parted ways with their SVP of scripted television, “Fargo” producer Nishika Kumble, who lasted less than two years in the role.

“Meghan and Harry don’t have a quality team around them,” Borkowski said. “They drive this ship, they are in the wheelhouse. Whether you are the Obamas or Meghan and Harry, you have to defer to people who can really get the job done.

“They just need to sort out a proper production company, they need significant hires,” he added. “People who can actually develop scripts, wrangle talent.”

The Archewell insider insisted the couple has hired talented new executives. Tracy Ryerson was brought in as the new head of scripted content. She formerly worked at the production company behind “Peaky Blinders,” Caryn Mandabach Productions, and starred in a reality show titled “The Real L Word.” Former Disney+ executive Chanel Pysnik joined in 2021 as head of unscripted.

The Sussexes made a surprise appearance at the Jamaica premiere of the Bob Marley biopic “One Love” in late January, sparking speculation about a possible deal with the film’s distributor Paramount Pictures, especially given that they reportedly travelled with the company’s boss Brian Robbins — who is a neighbor in Montecito — via a Paramount private jet.

Yet parent company Paramount Global is strongly rumored to be up for sale, so it is unlikely to be a safe landing pad for the couple.

Last August it was announced that WME signed Markle to be repped by Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, Brad Slater and Jill Smoller. Archewell is also being repped by the agency, which didn’t comment to TheWrap.

“She is extremely ambitious and knows what she wants,” an industry insider told TheWrap of Markle’s discussions with the talent agency. “But there have been issues with executive turnover inside Archewell.”

In the meantime, The Sussexes need to make money to keep up their California lifestyle and their $14.65 million mansion. The U.K.’s Daily Mail reported that they made around $20 million from their tell-all documentary, while Harry made an estimated $15 million from his memoir “Spare.”

“I think possibly Netflix has dodged a bullet,” Borkowski said. “They know their content, they are data wonks, they know where the interest is. So they’ve got a very good idea or not whether there is a huge amount of excitement around Meghan and Harry.”

The viewing public may not be interested in a romantic movie from the Sussexes, he said. “They create a lot of column inches, but do people want content from them unless it is revealing something extraordinary [about themselves or the British royals]?” he said. “I don’t know how much more they can reveal.”

https://www.thewrap.com/

After Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pulled the plug on their $20 million podcast deal with Spotify this week, Bill Simmons, the streamer’s head of podcast innovation and monetization and CEO of The Ringer, called them “f—ing grifters” on the latest episode of his podcast.

The deal, which was struck in 2020, resulted in only one show, the one-season, Markle-hosted “Archetypes.”

“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry’ leave Spotify negotiation, the f–ing grifters,” he told guest Joe House on Friday’s episode of “The Bill Simmons Podcast.” “I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories. F— the grifters.”

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Harry and Meghan would not receive the full $20 million from their payout. The two signed a deal with Netflix in 2020 to produce documentaries and series, and released their first show — a docuseries called “Harry & Meghan” — earlier this year.

Simmons, who founded sports and pop culture website The Ringer, sold it to Spotify in 2020 for $250 million. He’s in charge of several Ringer-branded podcasts at the podcast giant.

https://x.com/rBillSimmonsPod/status/1669665129393160192?s=20

#sussex sucks🍋#megxit #netflix #spare us #meghan markle #worldwide privacy tour #like a spare #brf #money laundering #Tyler Perry #Bill Simmons #grifters #megflix bust #markled

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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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Enshitternet

Going to Burning Man? Catch me on Tuesday at 2:40pm on the Center Camp Stage for a talk about enshittification and how to reverse it; on Wednesday at noon, I'm hosting Dr Patrick Ball at Liminal Labs (6:15/F) for a talk on using statistics to prove high-level culpability in the recruitment of child soldiers.

On September 6 at 7pm, I'll be hosting Naomi Klein at the LA Public Library for the launch of Doppelganger.

On September 12 at 7pm, I'll be at Toronto's Another Story Bookshop with my new book The Internet Con: How to Seize the Means of Computation.

This week on my podcast, I read "Enshitternet: The old, good internet deserves a new, good internet," my recent Medium column about building a better internet:

https://doctorow.medium.com/enshitternet-c1d4252e5c6b

As John @hodgman is fond of reminding us, "nostalgia is a toxic impulse." It is easy for an old net.hand like me to fall into the trap of shaking his fist at the cloud. Having been on the other side of that dynamic, I can tell you it's no fun.

When I got on BBSes in the early 1980s, there was an omnipresent chorus of grumps insisting that the move from honest acoustic couplers to decadent modems was the end of the Golden Age of telecommunications:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_coupler

When I got on Usenet shortly thereafter, the Unix Greybeard set never passed up an opportunity to tell us newcomers that the Fidonet-Usenet bridge allowed the barbarian hordes to overwhelm their Athenian marketplace of ideas:

https://technicshistory.com/2020/06/25/the-era-of-fragmentation-part-4-the-anarchists/

When I joined The WELL in the late 1980s, I was repeatedly assured that the good times were over, and that we would never see their like again:

https://www.well.com/

Now that I'm 52, I've learned to recognize this dynamic, from the Eternal September:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September

to the moral panic over menuing systems replacing CLIs:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/02/gopher-when-adversarial-interoperability-burrowed-under-gatekeepers-fortresses

to the culture wars over what would happen when the net got a normie-friendly GUI:

https://www.dejavu.org/1993win.htm

And yeah, I've done it too, explaining "Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)":

https://memex.craphound.com/2010/04/01/why-i-wont-buy-an-ipad-and-think-you-shouldnt-either/

But there's a key difference between my own warnings about the enshittification that new "user friendly" technologies would engender and all those other AARP members' complaints: they were wrong, and I was right.

As Tom Eastman reminded us, the internet really was better, back before it became "five giant websites filled with screenshots of text of the other four":

https://twitter.com/tveastman/status/1069674780826071040

The underlying pathology of that enshittification wasn't the UI, or whether it involved an app store. As the Luddites knew, the important thing about a technology isn't what it does, but who it does it for and who it does it to:

https://locusmag.com/2022/01/cory-doctorow-science-fiction-is-a-luddite-literature/

The problem wasn't which technology we used. There is nothing inherent about touchscreens that makes them into prisons that trap users, rather than walled gardens that protect them.

Likewise, the problem wasn't who made that technology. We didn't swap wise UUCP Monks for venal tech bros. The early tech world was full of public-spirited sysops, but it was also full of would-be monopolists who tried – and failed – to get us to "stop talking to each other and start buying things":

https://catvalente.substack.com/p/stop-talking-to-each-other-and-start

If it wasn't the technology that killed the old, good internet, and if it wasn't the people who killed the old, good internet, where did the enshitternet come from?

It wasn't the wrong tech, it wasn't the wrong people: it was the wrong rules. After all, the Apple ][+ went on sale the year Ronald Reagan hit the campaign trail. Consumer tech was the first industry born after antitrust was dismantled, and it created the modern monopoly playbook: buying and merging with competitors. The resulting unity of purpose and anticompetitive profit margins allowed tech to capture its regulators and secure favorable court and legislative outcomes.

The simultaneous drawdown of antitrust enforcement and growth of tech meant that tech's long-standing cycle of renewal was ended. Tech companies that owed their existence to their ability to reverse-engineer incumbent companies' products and make interoperable replacements and add-ons were able to ban anyone else from doing unto them as they did unto the giants that came before them:

https://doctorow.medium.com/let-the-platforms-burn-6fb3e6c0d980

The pirates became admirals, and set about creating a "felony contempt of business model":

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/03/painful-burning-dribble/#law-of-intended-consequences

They changed the rules to ensure that they could "disrupt" anyone they chose, but could themselves mobilize the full might of the US government to prevent anyone from disrupting them:

https://locusmag.com/2019/01/cory-doctorow-disruption-for-thee-but-not-for-me/

The old, good internet was the internet we we able to make while tech was still realizing the new anticompetitive powers it had at its disposal, and it disappeared because every administration, R and D, from Reagan to Trump, yanked more and more Jenga blocks out of the antitrust tower.

In other words: the old, good internet was always doomed, because it was being frantically built in an ever-contracting zone of freedom to tinker, where technologies could be operated by and for the people who used them.

Today, the Biden administration has ushered in a new era of antitrust renewal, planting the seeds of a disenshittification movement that will tame corporate power rather than nurturing it:

https://www.eff.org/de/deeplinks/2021/08/party-its-1979-og-antitrust-back-baby

In other words, we are living in the first days of a better nation.

In other words, rather than restoring the old, good internet, we should build a new, good internet.

What is a new, good internet? It's an internet where it's legal to:

reverse-engineer the products and services you use, to add interoperability to them so you can leave a social network without leaving your friends:

https://www.eff.org/interoperablefacebook

jailbreak devices to remove antifeatures, like surveillance, ink-locking, or repair-blocking:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/17/have-you-tried-not-spying/#coppa

move your media files and apps from any platform to any device or service, even if the company that sold them to you objects:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/07/audible-exclusive/#audiblegate

A new, good internet gives powers to users, and takes power away from corporations:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

On a new, good internet, companies can't practice algorithmic wage discrimination:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

They can't turn search into an auction between companies that match your query and companies that want to sell you fakes and knockoffs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

They can't charge rent to the people whose feeds you asked to read for the privilege of reaching you:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

In fact, a new, good internet is one where we euthanize rentiers:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

On the new good internet, your boss can't use bossware to turn "work from home" into "live at work":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

And on top of that, you have the right to hack that bossware to undetectably disable it (and hackers have the right to sell or give you that hack):

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/08/tech-rights-are-workers-rights-doordash-edition

On the new, good internet, we stop pretending that tech is stealing content from news companies, and focus on how tech steals money from the news, with app taxes, rigged ad markets, surveillance ads, and payola:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/04/saving-news-big-tech

The new, good internet is an internet where we seize the means of computation. It's an internet operated by and for the people who use it.

Hodgman is right. Nostalgia is a toxic impulse. The point of making a new, good internet isn't to revive the old, good internet. There were plenty of problems with the old, good internet. The point is to make a new, good internet that is the worthy successor to the old, good internet – and to consign the enshitternet to the scrapheap of history, an unfortunate transitional stage between one good internet and another.

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2023/08/21/enshitternet-the-old-good-internet-deserves-a-new-good-internet/

and here's a direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free, forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_448_-_Enshitternet.mp3

and here's a link to my podcast's RSS feed:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/22/the-new-good-internet/#the-old-good-internet

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

#podcasts #mp3s #enshittification #nostalgia #nostalgia is a toxic impulse #spoken word #the old good internet #the new good internet

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foxes-that-run · 7 months

Text

Haylor dates

After this post I gathered certain dates which something happens in many years.

20 May - Anniversary

2012 - Post on this here, both MIA then everything has changed written. This followed the Australia kiss in April.

2013 - Taylor posted roses to instagram with "Just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer." Gatsby quote. Harry was seen with Paige after.

2015 - trainwreck BBMAs were the 17th. On 22nd Harry posted a few colour IG posts, 👀had been B&W since OOTW released and went back to B&W. On me exception was February 2017 the same day he posted about shaking an apple from a tree. Taylors Clean Speech was included 'where we should be' Harry later put in Woman.

2017 - Harry performs Debut at Troubadour, album launch party. Wears Haylor ring on Carpool Karaoke

2019 - Taylor releases City of Lover (19th) HS wore white horse shirt and gold shorts on beach. Harry appeared in British Vogue 20 May with a swan in every picture.

2022 - 10th 20 May - Harry's House released. NY One night only concert on 21st. Taylor released This Love Taylors Version. Harry's photographer released photos of him in Henson Studios, where Boyfriends was recorded.

2023 - TS says her life is finally making sense and performs Question..? Saying it brings happy memories

See Also

28 September

Harry's release dates,

Taylor's release dates,

Hayor date calendar

#haylor #Haylor anniversaries

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maxs-guesswork · 23 days

Text

Unfinished Timeline for an Untitled Setting

Critique and advice is more than welcome, though please be nice about it. Goes up to about 2081 rn, though I plan to get at least another 50 years further in before I get to the time I want the bulk of the setting to be set in.

Timeline:

2022: First controlled break-even fusion reaction, followed by first controlled net-gain fusion reaction.

2025-2026: Increasing unrest in USA leads to mass riots outside the white-house. Sweeping reforms after growing revolts threaten to become a major armed rebellion. NASA miraculously left untouched, general increase in standard of living. Economic crisis narrowly averted.

2027: First nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) tested in orbit by NASA and DARPA. GPT-style language modeling declared “dead end” for self-aware AI.

2030: First Lunar base established under NASA Artemis program. Suez Canal temporarily blocked by a poorly driven cargo ship again. Evergreen Shipping goes bankrupt.

2034: Lunar Gateway established under joint NASA, ESA, JAXA, DLR, ASI, and CNSA. Lunar helium-3 mining declared officially nonviable. Radial detonation engines become standard for lower ascent stages, SpaceX Starship, NASA SLS, and Roscosmos Soyuz phased out. Drop in launch prices.

2034-2036: Additional modules added to the Lunar Gateway from SpaceX, KARI, ISRO, and Roscosmos. Lunar Gateway Collaborative Group (LGCG) established consisting of all current contributors to the station.

2036: First commercial fusion energy plant reaches full operation in France under ITER. Mass production of Tritium begins. First fully private space station under SpaceX. Asteroid mining corporations begin formation. Establishment of Nigerian Organization for the Development of Space (NODS). Ecuador experiences communist revolution.

2036-2037: First manned martian mission under LGCG, first human footsteps on another planetary body.

2037: Elon Musk assassinated. New SpaceX leadership declares plans for space elevator. North Korea collapses, Korean peninsula unified under South Korean leadership, becoming simply Korea. Indian nuclear stockpile secretly surpasses 50000 Gt. First baby born on the moon.

2040: Artemis base becomes semi-self sufficient, producing it’s own food and air from hydroponics, and water from mined lunar ice. Lunar LH2 and hydrolox production begins. Lunar population passes 100.

2040-2042: First commercial fusion power plants established in the US, UK, Australia, Korea, and Japan.

2042: A joint US Government and SpaceX black operation destabilizes Ecuador, leading to a corporate takeover of the territory.

2044: Korea, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand form West Pacific Trade Organization (WPTO). Construction of the base of SpaceX’s planned space elevator begins off the coast of Ecuador.

2047: LCC completed at CERN. Mission for permanent martian base declared. Major economic crisis in China, intervention from several megacorps results in a decrease in Chinese government power and increase in corporate control in the region. SpaceX space elevator counterweight construction begins in geostationary orbit.

2048: Major revolution in quantum mechanics brought on by new data from the LCC. Lunar population passes 250.

2050: China splits into 4 corporate states, Amazon Corporate Territory (ACT) with its capitol in Chongqing, Samsung Independent State (SIS) with its capitol in Shanghai, Territory for Electronic Developments (TED) made up of Apple and Microsoft with its capitol in Yinchuan, and the Chinese Corporate Union (CCU) made up of several formerly state-owned corporations with their capitol in Wuhan and possession of the Three Gorges Dam. Beijing becomes an independent city-state controlled by the former Chinese government, retaining control over the CNSA. Massive revolution in battery energy density. Permanent martian base established by LGCG.

2051: Breakthrough in photon manipulation, beamed energy and solar collection becomes increasingly viable. Many asteroid mining corps branch into solar power, notably Binghamton Vacuum Mining Solutions (BVMS). Lunar population passes 500.

2052: Martian population surpasses 100.

2053: Martian base reaches semi-self sustainability.

2055: All 4 Chinese corporate states and the Beijing city state form the Chinese Federation for Space Exploration (CFSE), supplanting the old CNSA. Lunar Gateway module renamed and LGCG roster amended accordingly. SpaceX space elevator cable completed, first test cart sent to GEO. WPTO begins construction of a space elevator in the Banda Sea.

2056: SpaceX space elevator declared complete, commercial operation begins.

2057: BVMS surpasses $1T in net worth, becomes primary supplier of energy for the Artemis Lunar Base. Lunar Population surpasses 1k, massive migratory population surge begins following influx of energy from BVMS. Martian population surpasses 250. First fusion reactor in Ecuador.

2058: WPTO space elevator counterweight begins construction in GEO.

2060: First fusion reactors in Nigeria and India. First large-scale solar collector on Earth constructed in New York operated by BVMS. Large population surge in Binghamton NY. Lunar population surpasses 5k. Martian space station established. Regulations for GEO development established.

2061: First lunar-built spacecraft flown. Secondary lunar settlement founded by CFSE. Massive influx of funds for the WPTO space elevator from the CFSE, GEO counterweight construction begun. Lunar Gateway population surpasses 100. First fusion reactor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Congo space agency (DRCSA) founded.

2064: WPTO space elevator cable completed, declared complete and opened to commercial operation.

2065: BVME establishes unmanned Mercurian base. CFSE settlement population surpasses 100. Martian population surpasses 500. Lunar Gateway population surpasses 200.

2066: Mass expansion of Artemis Base life support systems using BVMS produced automated construction equipment. Aerostat scientific outpost established by LGCG.

2067: Microbial life discovered on Venus. Venus outpost (and LGCG) acquires substantial funding boost. Artemis base population surpasses 2.5k and begins to plateau.

2069: Unmanned mission to Europa announced by LGCG, plans to use BVMS automated platforms to drill into subsurface ocean established. Martian base purchases automated construction equipment from BVMS, massive population boon ensues. CFSE settlement population surpasses 750. Lunar gateway population surpasses 500. Martian base population surpasses 500. BVME becomes the largest corporate entity in the system.

2070: BVMS performs feasibility study on gas giant aerostat mining platforms.

2071: Study of Venusian lifeforms disproves Earth-Venus panspermia.

2073: BVMS tests laser-sail propulsion on small unmanned craft.

2075: LGCG Europa mission discovers multicellular aquatic life in Europa’s subsurface ocean. Plans for a dedicated research base drafted.

2076: Multi-corporate base established on Ceres to facilitate further asteroid belt mining. BVMS intentionally excluded from this project.

(System effectively split into quarters: Past Venus under BVMS, Between Venus and Mars under LGCG, belt under Multi-corporate mining control, outer system unclaimed.)

2077: GEO-Lunar cycler niche mostly filled by Intraplanetary Transport Services corp (ITS).

2080: Permanent scientific base established at the Europa Breach Point (EBP) with mostly automated systems and a small (5 human) management and maintenance crew.

2081: Panspermia further disproved by study of Europan life. Massive object detected in Jupiter’s lower atmosphere. BVMS begins mission to establish a mining aerostat on Saturn, utilizing laser sail propulsion to transport equipment.

(Saturn Aerostat site intended for use in the further colonization of the outer solar system and the Uranus planetary system itself. Atomic Rockets page)

#writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #worldbuilding #science fiction #hard scifi

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spacetimewithstuartgary · 9 months

Text

New SpaceTime out Monday.

SpaceTime 20231002 Series 26 Episode 118

Does antimatter fall up or down in gravity?

Does antimatter fall up or down under the influence of gravity? It’s been an age old question among first year physics students the world over, and now we finally have an answer – it falls down just like regular matter.

NASA’S epic Osiris-Rex mission returns home

NASA’s first ever asteroid sample return mission has arrived safely back on Earth parachuting down onto a US Military test range in the Utah desert.

Iran’s nuclear missile program advances another step

Iran claims it’s launched a new spy satellite into orbit. The seven kilogram Nour-3 imaging cubeSat was launched aboard a Qased rocket by Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The Science Report

COVID-19 was the third leading cause of death in Australian in 2022.

Antarctic sea ice has reached a new record low winter growth -- its lowest since records began.

The world’s most powerful X-ray laser:

Skeptics guide to Australia's best psychic

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States. The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science. SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research. The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network. Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor. Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. Later, Gary became part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and was one of its first presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth. The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually. However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage. Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently. StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016. Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

#science #space #astronomy #physics #news #nasa #esa #astrophysics #spacetimewithstuartgary #starstuff #spacetime

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thewhumpyprintingpress · 6 months

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Hello!

I was really excited to find this blog. I was wondering if there's more information about WPP itself anywhere? Reading through, I have questions about the press itself, like how are works being published (through Amazon? do you guys have an actual physical printing press? something else?), do you guys do promotion or is the main audience just followers of this blog, things like that.

Sorry if it's written somewhere and I just couldn't find it!

Hi!

We just got our start in 2022, so we are still in the process of getting things rolling. We publish our books through Draft2Digital (unfortunately we don't have our own printing press yet), as this is the easiest way for us to distribute books at this point in time. D2D allows us to distribute ebooks and print books to most of the major sales venues (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, etc.). For books that are more art focused (ex. zines) we use either Mixam or PrintNinja to get those printed.

Since both of the books we've published so far have been for charity, promotion has focused on this blog. But for future books, we'll be expanding promotions to outside the tumblrverse. Our tentative marketing plan is that we'll be building up a review team of bookstagrammers, booktubers, and book bloggers, and scheduling promotions with various book promotion agencies.

In the new year we'll be focusing on building up WPP. Future plans include launching an email newsletter, commissioning a professional logo, and whump merch. It's going to be a busy year!

#wpp meta

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mariacallous · 4 days

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The latest in a series of duels announced by the European Commission is with Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Brussels suspects that the giant based in Redmond, Washington, has failed to properly moderate content produced by the generative AI systems on Bing, Copilot, and Image Creator, and that as a result, it may have violated the Digital Services Act (DSA), one of Europe’s latest digital regulations.

On May 17, the EU summit requested company documents to understand how Microsoft handled the spread of hallucinations (inaccurate or nonsensical answers produced by AI), deepfakes, and attempts to improperly influence the upcoming European Parliament elections. At the beginning of June, voters in the 27 states of the European Union will choose their representatives to the European Parliament, in a campaign over which looms the ominous shadow of technology with its potential to manipulate the outcome. The commission has given Microsoft until May 27 to respond, only days before voters go to the polls. If there is a need to correct course, it may likely be too late.

Europe’s Strategy

Over the past few months, the European Commission has started to bang its fists on the table when dealing with the big digital giants, almost all of them based in the US or China. This isn’t the first time. In 2022, the European Union hit Google with a fine of €4.1 billion because of its market dominance thanks to its Android system, marking the end of an investigation that started in 2015. In 2023, it sanctioned Meta with a fine of €1.2 billion for violating the GDPR, the EU’s data protection regulations. And in March it presented Apple with a sanction of €1.8 billion.

Recently, however, there appears to have been a change in strategy. Sanctions continue to be available as a last resort when Big Tech companies don’t bend to the wishes of Brussels, but now the European Commission is aiming to take a closer look at Big Tech, find out how it operates, and modify it as needed, before imposing fines. Take, for example, Europe’s Digital Services Act, which attempts to impose transparency in areas like algorithms and advertising, fight online harassment and disinformation, protect minors, stop user profiling, and eliminate dark patterns (design features intended to manipulate our choices on the web).

In 2023, Brussels identified 22 multinationals that, due to their size, would be the focus of its initial efforts: Google with its four major services (search, shopping, maps, and play), YouTube, Meta with Instagram and Facebook, Bing, X (formerly Twitter), Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Amazon, Booking, Wikipedia, Apple’s App Store, TikTok, Alibaba, Zalando, and the porn sites Pornhub, XVideos, and Stripchat. Since then, it has been putting the pressure on these companies to cooperate with its regulatory regime.

The day before the Bing investigation was announced, the commission also opened one into Meta to determine what the multinational is doing to protect minors on Facebook and Instagram and counter the “rabbit hole” effect—that is, the seamless flood of content that demands users’ attention, and which can be especially appealing to younger people. That same concern led it to block the launch of TikTok Lite in Europe, deeming its system for rewarding social engagement dangerous and a means of encouraging addictive behavior. It has asked X to increase its content moderation, LinkedIn to explain how its ad system works, and AliExpress to defend its refund and complaint processes.

A Mountain of Laws …

On one hand, the message appears to be that no one will escape the reach of Brussels. On the other, the European Commission, led by President Ursula von der Leyen, has to demonstrate that the many digital laws and regulations that are in place actually produce positive results. In addition to the DSA, there is the Digital Markets Act (DMA), intended to counterbalance the dominance of Big Tech in online markets; the AI Act, Europe’s flagship legislation on artificial intelligence; and the Data Governance Act (DGA) and the Data Act, which address data protection and the use of data in the public and private sectors. Also to be added to the list are the updated cybersecurity package, NIS2 (Network and Information Security); the Digital Operational Resilience Act, focused on finance and insurance; and the digital identity package within eIDAS 2. Still in the draft stage are regulations on health data spaces and much-debated chat measures which would authorize law enforcement agencies and platforms to scan citizens’ private messages, looking for child pornography.

Brussels has deployed its heavy artillery against the digital flagships of the United States and China, and a few successful blows have landed, such as ByteDance’s suspension of the gamification feature on TikTok Lite following its release in France and Spain. But the future is uncertain and complicated. While investigations attract media interest, the EU’s digital bureaucracy is a large and complex machine to run.

On February 17, the DSA became law for all online service operators (cloud and hosting providers, search engines, e-commerce, and online services) but the European Commission doesn’t and can’t control everything. That is why it asked states to appoint a local authority to serve as a coordinator of digital services. Five months later, Brussels had to send a formal notice to six states (Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Poland, Portugal, and Slovakia) to urge them to designate and fully empower their digital services coordinators. Those countries now have two months to comply before Brussels will intervene. But there are others who are also not in the clear. For example, Italy’s digital services coordinator, the Communications Regulatory Authority (abbreviated AGCOM, for Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, in Italian), needs to recruit 23 new employees to replenish its staff. The department told WIRED Italy that it expects to have filled all of its appointments by mid-June.

The DSA also introduced “trusted flaggers.” These are individuals or entities, such as universities, associations, and fact-checkers, committed to combating online hatred, internet harassment, illegal content, and the spread of scams and fake news. Their reports are, one hopes, trustworthy. The selection of trusted flaggers is up to local authorities but, to date, only Finland has formalized the appointment of one, specifically Tekijänoikeuden tiedotus- ja valvontakeskus ry (in English, the Copyright Information and Anti-Piracy Center). Its executive director, Jaana Pihkala, explained to WIRED Italy that their task is “to produce reports on copyright infringements,” a subject on which the association has 40 years of experience. Since its appointment as a trusted flagger, the center’s two lawyers, who perform all of its functions, have sent 816 alerts to protect films, TV series, and books on behalf of Finnish copyright holders.

… and a Mountain of Data

To assure that the new commission is respected by the 27 states, the commission set up the DSA surveillance system as quickly as possible, but the bureaucrats in Brussels still have a formidable amount of research to do. On the one hand, there is the anonymous reporting platform with which the commission hopes to build dossiers on the operations of different platforms directly from internal sources. The biggest scandals that have shaken Meta have been thanks to former employees, like Christopher Wylie, the analyst who revealed how Cambridge Analytica attempted to influence the US elections, and Frances Haugen, who shared documents about the impacts of Instagram and Facebook on children’s health. The DSA, however, intends to empower and fund the commission so that it can have its own people capable of sifting through documents and data, analyzing the content, and deciding whether to act.

The commission boasts that the DSA will force platforms to be transparent. And indeed it can point to some successes already, for example, by revealing the absurdly inadequate numbers of moderators employed by platforms. According to the latest data released last November, they don’t even cover all the languages spoken in the European Union. X reported that it had only two people to check content in Italian, the language of 9.1 million users. There were no moderators for Greek, Finnish, or Romanian even though each language has more than 2 million subscribers. AliExpress moderates everything in English while, for other languages, it makes do with automatic translators. LinkedIn moderates content in 12 languages of the European bloc—that is, just half of the official languages.

At the same time, the commission has forced large platforms to standardize their reports of moderation interventions to feed a large database, which, at the time of writing this article, contains more than 18.2 billion records. Of these cases, 69 percent were handled automatically. But, perhaps surprisingly, 92 percent concerned Google Shopping. This is because the platform uses various parameters to determine whether a product can be featured: the risk that it is counterfeited, possible violations of site standards, prohibited goods, dangerous materials, and others. It can thus be the case that several alerts are triggered for the same product and the DSA database counts each one separately, multiplying the shopping numbers exponentially. So now the EU has a mass of data that further complicates its goal of being fully transparent.

Zalando’s Numbers

And then there’s the Big Tech companies’ legal battle against the fee they have to pay to the commission to help underwrite its supervisory bodies. Meta, TikTok, and Zalando have challenged the fee (though paid it). Zalando is also the only European company on the commission’s list of large platforms, a designation Zalando has always contested because it does not believe it meets the criteria used by Brussels. One example: The platforms on the list must have at least 45 million monthly users in Europe. The commission argues that Zalando has 83 million users, though that number, for example, includes visits from Portugal, where the platform is not marketed, and Zalando argues those users should be deducted from its total count. According to its calculations, the activities subject to the DSA reach only 31 million users, under the threshold. When Zalando was assessed its fee, it discovered that the commission had based it on a figure of 47.5 million users, far below the initial 83 million. The company has now taken the commission to court in an attempt to assure a transparent process.

And this is just one piece of legislation, the DSA. The commission has also deployed the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a package of regulations to counterbalance Big Tech’s market dominance, requiring that certain services be interoperable with those of other companies, that apps that come loaded on a device by default can be uninstalled, and that data collected on large platforms be shared with small- and medium-size companies. Again, the push to impose these mandates starts with the giants: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, ByteDance, and Microsoft. In May, Booking was added to the list.

Big Tech Responds

Platforms have started to respond to EU requests, with lukewarm results. WhatsApp, for instance, has been redesigned to allow chatting with other apps without compromising its end-to-end encryption that protects the privacy and security of users, but it is still unclear who will agree to connect to it. WIRED US reached out to 10 messaging companies, including Google, Telegram, Viber, and Signal, to ask whether they intend to look at interoperability and whether they had worked with WhatsApp on its plans. The majority didn’t respond to the request for comment. Those that did, Snap and Discord, said they had nothing to add. Apple had to accept sideloading—i.e., the possibility of installing and updating iPhone or iPad applications from stores outside the official one. However, the first alternative that emerged, AltStore, offers very few apps at this time. And it has suffered some negative publicity after refusing to accept the latest version of its archenemy Spotify’s app, despite the fact that the audio platform had removed the link to its website for subscriptions.

The DMA is a regulation that has the potential to break the dominant positions of Big Tech companies, but that outcome is not a given. Take the issue of surveillance: The commission has funds to pay the salaries of 80 employees, compared to the 120 requested by Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and the 220 requested by the European Parliament, as summarized by Bruegel in 2022. And on the website of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), Adam Kovacevich, founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress, a politically left-wing tech industry coalition (all of the digital giants, which also fund CEPA, are members), stated that the DMA, “instead of helping consumers, aims to help competitors. The DMA is making large tech firms’ services less useful, less secure, and less family-friendly. Europeans’ experience of large tech firms’ services is about to get worse compared to the experience of Americans and other non-Europeans.”

Kovacevich represents an association financed by some of those same companies that the DMA is focused on, and there is a shared fear that the DMA will complicate the market and, in the end, benefit only a few companies—not necessarily those most at risk because of the dominance of Silicon Valley. It is not only lawsuits and fines, but also the perceptions of citizens and businesses that will help to determine whether EU regulations are successful. The results may come more slowly than desired by Brussels as new legislation is rarely positively received at first.

Learning From GDPR and Gaia-X

Another regulatory act, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), has become the global industry standard, forcing online operators to change the way they handle our data. But if you ask the typical person on the street, they’ll likely tell you it’s just a simple cookie wall that you have to approve before continuing on to a webpage. Or it’s viewed as a law that has required the retention of dedicated external consultants on the part of companies. It is rarely described as the ultimate online privacy law, which is exactly what it is. That said, while the act has reshaped the privacy landscape, there have been challenges, as the digital rights association Noyb has explained. The privacy commissioners of Ireland and Luxembourg, where many web giants are based for tax purposes, have had bottlenecks in investigating violations. According to the latest figures from Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), 19,581 complaints have been submitted in the past five years, but the body has made only 37 formal decisions and only eight of those began with complaints. Noyb recently conducted a survey of 1,000 data protection officers; 74 percent were convinced that if privacy officers investigated the typical European company, they would find at least one GDPR violation.

The GDPR was also the impetus for another unsuccessful operation: separating the European cloud from the US cloud in order to shelter the data of EU citizens from Washington’s Cloud Act. In 2019, France and Germany announced with great fanfare a federation, Gaia-X, that would defend the continent and provide a response to the cloud market, which has been split between the United States and China. Five years later, the project has become bogged down in the process of establishing standards, after the entry of the giants it was supposed to counter, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Huawei, and Alibaba, as well as the controversial American company Palantir (which analyses data for defense purposes). This led some of the founders, such as the French cloud operator Scaleway, to flee, and that then turned the spotlight on the European Parliament, which led the commission to launch an alternative, the European Alliance for Industrial Data, Edge and Cloud, which counts among its 49 members 26 participants from Gaia-X (everyone except for the non-EU giants) and enjoys EU financial support.

In the meantime, the Big Tech giants have found a solution that satisfies European wishes, investing en masse to establish data centers on EU soil. According to a study by consultancy firm Roland Berger, 34 data center transactions were finalized in 2023, growing at an average annual rate of 29.7 percent since 2019. According to Mordor Intelligence, another market analysis company, the sector in Europe will grow from €35.4 billion in 2024 to an estimated €57.7 billion in 2029. In recent weeks, Amazon web services announced €7.8 billion in investments in Germany. WIRED Italy has reported on Amazon’s interest in joining the list of accredited operators to host critical public administration data in Italy, which already includes Microsoft, Google, and Oracle. Notwithstanding its proclamations about sovereignty, Brussels has had to capitulate: The cloud is in the hands of the giants from the United States who have found themselves way ahead of their Chinese competitors after diplomatic relations between Beijing and Brussels cooled.

The AI Challenge

The newest front in this digital battle is artificial intelligence. Here, too, the European Union has been the first to come up with some rules under its AI Act, the first legislation to address the different applications of this technology and establish permitted and prohibited uses based on risk assessments. The commission does not want to repeat the mistakes of the past. Mindful of the launch of the GDPR, which in 2018 caused companies to scramble to assure they were compliant, it wants to lead organizations through a period of voluntary adjustment. Already 400 companies have declared their interest in joining the effort, including IBM.

In the meantime, Brussels must build a number of structures to make the AI Act work. First is the AI Council. It will have one representative from each country and will be divided into two subgroups, one dedicated to market development and the other to public sector uses of AI. In addition, it will be joined by a committee of technical advisers and an independent committee of scientists and experts, along the lines of the UN Climate Committee. Secondly, the AI Office, which sits within Directorate-General Connect (the department in charge of digital technology), will take care of administrative aspects of the AI Act. The office will assure that the act is applied uniformly, investigate alleged violations, establish codes of conduct, and classify artificial intelligence models that pose a systemic risk. Once the rules are established, research on new technologies can proceed. After it is fully operational, the office will employ 100 people, some of them redeployed from General Connect while others will be new hires. At the moment, the office is looking to hire six administrative staff and an unknown number of tech experts.

On May 29, the first round of bids in support of the regulation expired. These included the AI Innovation Accelerator, a center that provides training, technical standards, and software and tools to promote research, support startups and small- and medium-sized enterprises, and assist public authorities that have to supervise AI. A total of €6 million is on the table. Another €2 million will finance management and €1.5 million will go to the EU’s AI testing facilities, which will, on behalf of countries’ antitrust authorities, analyze artificial intelligence models and products on the market to assure that they comply with EU rules.

Follow the Money

Finally, a total of €54 million is designated for a number of business initiatives. The EU knows it is lagging behind. According to an April report by the European Parliament’s research service, which provides data and intelligence to support legislative activities, the global AI market, which in 2023 was estimated at €130 billion, will reach close to €1.9 trillion in 2030. The lion’s share is in the United States, with €44 billion of private investment in 2022, followed by China with €12 billion. Overall, the European Union and the United Kingdom attracted €10.2 billion in the same year. According to Eurochamber researchers, between 2018 and the third quarter of 2023, US AI companies received €120 billion in investment, compared to €32.5 billion for European ones.

Europe wants to counter the advance of the new AI giants with an open source model, and it has also made its network of supercomputers available to startups and universities to train algorithms. First, however, it had to adapt to the needs of the sector, investing almost €400 million in graphics cards, which, given the current boom in demand, will not arrive anytime soon.

Among other projects to support the European AI market, the commission wants to use €24 million to launch a Language Technology Alliance that would bring together companies from different states to develop a generative AI to compete with ChatGPT and similar tools. It’s an initiative that closely resembles Gaia-X. Another €25 million is earmarked for the creation of a large open source language model, available to European companies to develop new services and research projects. The commission intends to fund several models and ultimately choose the one best suited to Europe’s needs. Overall, during the period from 2021 to 2027, the Digital Europe Program plans to spend €2.1 billion on AI. That figure may sound impressive, but it pales in comparison to the €10 billion that a single company, Microsoft, invested in OpenAI.

The €25 million being spent on the European large language model effort, if distributed to many smaller projects, risks not even counterbalancing the €15 million that Microsoft has spent bringing France’s Mistral, Europe’s most talked-about AI startup, into its orbit. The big AI models will become presences in Brussels as soon as the AI Act, now finally approved, comes into full force. In short, the commission is making it clear in every way it can that a new sheriff is in town. But will the bureaucrats of Brussels be adequately armed to take on Big Tech? Only one thing is certain—it’s not going to be an easy task.

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the-conversation-pod · 11 months

Text

Welcome Back My Boyfriend!

AND WE'RE BACK!

It's finally time to discuss Our Skyy 2! We were playing hurt this night: Ben was still recovering from dental surgery (please forgive his voice during this episode) and Nini was nursing a headache. Still, it didn't stop us from discussing all eight shows and talking about the crossover for an hour!

Nini and Ben assess the entirety of Our Skyy 2 and rank the offerings from worst to first.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

Listen on Google Podcasts

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond to chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

0:00 - Welcome 1:15 - Intro 6:07 - Vice Versa 14:23 - Star in My Mind 19:20 - Never Let Me Go 28:00 - A Boss and a Babe 36:45 - The Eclipse 49:50 - My School President 1:00:24 - Badd Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars 1:59:13 - Overall Score for Our Skyy 2

The Conversation: Now With Transcripts!

We received an accessibility request to include transcripts for the podcast. We are working with @ginnymoonbeam on providing the transcripts and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

0:00 - Welcome

Nini

Hello, hello! Your QL fandom aunty and uncle are here with giant sunglasses, brown liquor in a flask, a folded five-dollar bill to slip into your hand when no one is looking, lukewarm takes, occasional rides on the discourse, deep dives into artistry and the industry.

Ben

Lots of simping! I’m Ben.

Nini

I’m Nini.

Ben

And this is The Conversation. About once a season, we plan to swan in and shoot the shit on faves, flops, and trends that we’ve been noticing in the BL, GL, or QL Industry. Between seasons, you can find us typing way too many words on Tumblr.

1:15 - Intro

Nini

Hi, Ben. How are you tonight?

Ben

I'm battling my own body's slow recovery from dental surgery but it doesn't matter because we have so much to record so we're sticking to the schedule!

Nini

But, we're gonna be okay. You've got meds, I've got meds—a.k.a. beer—for this headache. We're gonna be fine. We're doing it live. So, what are we talking about tonight? We are talking about Our Skyy 2… What a journey. Ben, explain to the people the concept of Our Skyy.

Ben

Welcome back, my boyfriend! That's it.

Nini

[laughs]

Ben

Jojo started this off and summed it up perfectly. Our Skyy originally served as a sort of epilogue project for the initial run of GMMTV BLs.

In the first run we had the Puppy Honey crew with OffGun, the SOTUS pair with Krist and Singto, the InSun pair from My Dear Loser: Edge of 17, Tay and New from Kiss the series—before Dark Blue Kiss, and Drake and Frank from My Tee a.k.a. ‘Cause You're My Boy.

Nini

So, that's the concept of Our Skyy. So, when GMMTV put out its 2023 offerings last year: Surprise! Our Skyy 2. They are giving us epilogues for 2020, 2021, and some 2022 shows. We're gonna dive into these.

Ben

With the original Our Skyy it was kind of chaotic. So, every crew kind of just did what felt right for their characters.

Like, Pete and Kao basically went on a date that was mostly uncomplicated—something their characters needed.

OffGun did a body swap which was just so they could let Gun pick on Off for a bit.

In and Sun got closure—unsurprising, Aof was on that one.

‘Cause You're My Boy: they just kind of did just a hot mess that was weirdly endearing, which is exactly what their show was.

And SOTUS did like the the next most logical thing for Arthit and Kongpob, which was them kinda saying goodbye as they were heading into a long distance form of their relationship because Kongpob was pursuing higher schooling outside of Thailand, if I remember correctly?

In a similar vein, this particular Our Skyy run that we're going to be talking about very much captured what I think the core spirit of the original work was, and each team came back to it—for the most part—with something to say that was consistent with their original offerings.

Nini

Yep.

Ben

We went Never Let Me Go, Star in My Mind, The Eclipse, Vice Versa, My School President, A Boss and a Babe, Bad Buddy? and then A Tale of Thousand Stars.

Nini

I also think that the airing order was very interesting and maybe we'll get a little time to talk about how they chose to air what they did when they did. This Our Skyy, I think, wanted to lean a little bit into the crack. Every single outing had a little bit of a crack element to it—and I quite like that. I enjoyed that. I had fun with that—for the most part—and we'll get to the ones where I did not enjoy that.

Ben

I do think that the Our Skyy project leans into fan service, and not in an inherently negative way? They want the people who enjoyed this show to have fun coming back to the show, and it’s been notable for me that, for the most part, I found that if someone really liked the original show they also really liked their Our Skyy outing. So like, for those of you who've listened to me or followed me, you know what shows I didn't like or despised when they aired and—unsurprisingly—my takes are fairly consistent.

Nini

Maybe it's the corners of the internet that I've been perusing, which you always tell me to stop looking at…I feel like the more that people liked the OG show the more upset they were with the Our Skyy. Maybe that's just the people are being wrong on the internet corners of the internet that I like to occasionally look through. [laughs]

Ben

[laughs] I don't go there.

6:07 - Vice Versa

Nini

Let's delve into it. Let's start talking some specifics. So, if we're going from worst to first my worst without a doubt was the Vice Versa Our Skyy. I am on record as not having watched Vice Versa because I was not interested in Vice Versa. I have tried and failed so many times with Jittirain stories that I knew that I was not going to enjoy this one, and so I never watched the original. But, for the sake of the podcast, I watched every single Our Skyy including this one, except I did not finish this one. [laughs] I started watching it. I was mostly annoyed, and then something happened that just… I just said, “Oh, absolutely not,” and I stopped watching it.

So, the trope—the, the crack trope—for the Vice Versa Our Skyy; the fan fic-y, fan service-y trope is: Add a Kid. I think it's Puen? Puen and Talay have been together for a while now. They're working hard, working a lot. They don't have as much time for each other. And so Talay comes up with the idea of doing a month of special days where they pay very close attention to each other and they do special things together. And it's a really sweet idea and honestly if that had been it I would have been fine. There would have been no problem.

But then they add a kid, and the way that they add a kid is what pisses me off. One of their friends… essentially delivers his nephew into the care of these strangers… so that they can play house? But it's also like a trick that Puen is playing on Talay. Because this kid just shows up at the house and Talay thinks that it might be his kid. Like, the, the setup of Vice Versa has always—as I have said before—every time I think I know what Vice Versa is about, Ben lets me know that I don't actually know what Vice Versa is about. But there's some way that Talay thinks that this kid is his somehow.

Ben

Would you like the context for why he believes that kid is his?

Nini

Sure, hit me with it!

Ben

So, they basically spend two years in the other world with Nanon and Ohm’s characters in their bodies. Ohm's character, Tess, is an asshole who absolutely ruined Talay’s life for the two years he was in his body. He sabotaged and ruined every personal and professional relationship that Talay had.

When he got back to his own body he had to spend years fixing his own life. Which sucks, because while he was in Tess's body he basically fixed Tess's life. It's really upsetting for me that Puen, who claims to love Talay, who watched him suffer for all of the things that Tess did to his life would genuinely let Talay believe that Tess saddled him with the responsibility of an unplanned kid… because he thinks his boyfriend doesn't pay enough attention to him… like he makes his boyfriend work outside in a tent in Thailand to do graphic design on an iMac.

Nini

You were really really mad about the tent. [laughs] I remember when we were watching this. You were really pissed about the tent.

Ben

I'm—I'm not over it.

It's humid in Thailand! Why would he be outside with a Mac? Oh my God—

It's frustrating because… On the one hand, I understand the impulse of, like, how do we get these guys to consider a new form of domesticity together? But, like, why do we have to use an actual child? Why can't we use, like, a dog, or a cat? Not coercing a child into letting strangers bathe him, and treat him like he's their son, and sleep with him in their bed. It’s so, so weird… and really unhinged… and it made me like a bunch of characters even less than I already did!

It was aggravating. It's frustrating because Puen did this through the whole show. Like, he doesn't trust Talay. He lies to him. He manipulates him. Talay and he are both in entertainment and Talay was against a huge deadline the night of Puen’s birthday, and he couldn't take a break from his work to meet his deadline to go do flirty, boyfriend things with Puen.

Puen expressed this frustration directly the next day in a way that I thought was totally valid and then Talay goes, ‘You are correct. Here is the plan I've come up with for us to make sure that we don't take our own relationship for granted, and keep working at it.’ And they have a really great month doing cute boyfriend date things while trying to maintain their careers. And so the whole secret baby felt completely unnecessary.

Like, we need something to happen for the plot to justify Jimmy, Neo, Aou, and Sea hanging out together. So, we have to introduce a secret baby, I guess?

I hated it…[laughs] Like, people joke that I don't often give low scores because I don't usually watch crap. Like, if something is, like, really really bad out of the gate I am like, “Oof! I don't have time for this!” and I'll usually drop it these days, because I got too much to do. But, like, I gave the show a 3 because I was deeply put off by the coercion of a child and the audacity of it all. Because, like, you know what your boyfriend went through because of Tess.

Why would you pull on that really traumatic thread from five years ago and make him believe that Tess had done this to him as well—knowing that Talay has a strong sense of responsibility, and would of course try to do right by a potential child.

Like, it's hard to even talk about, like, any of the cute relationship things that may have come out of this because, like, they should divorce.

Nini

I did not enjoy this when it was revealed that the kid was…tricked. I turned it off, and I did not watch the end.

For every special of Our Skyy, I gave it a drama score and a crack score. My drama score for this was a -5, because I was entirely unamused—like wholly unamused. This is not what I came to see in any way. I don't care if the kid is cute. I don't care if they're all cute together. They're literally using a child to fix their relationship—

Ben

And, explicitly, the child's parents did not know that this was happening.

Nini

—which makes it worse! So, I gave it a drama score of a -5, which is of course an overreaction but it's still getting a 0. Crack score, I gave it a 10, because it is actual crack? Like, this is probably the crackiest thing that happened in all of Our Skyy. But…it's not enjoyable as crack! So, let's give it a… 5 for crack… So, 0 for drama, 5 for crack gives it a score of 2.5, which sounds about correct.

Ben

Yeah, not good.

Nini

Yeah.

Ben

Pass.

Nini

Not good. Tens or chops? One chop!

Ben

Two chops!

[both laugh]

14:23 - Star in My Mind

Nini

Let's leave Vice Versa behind in the dustbin where it belongs and let's move on to the next on the list: Star in My Mind. Hoo!

Ben

[laughs]

Nini

Ben, I can't even remember what happened, I was so bored watching these episodes, like, dead bored. Star in My Mind is also a show that I did not watch the OG show. So, I had no idea what it was about and was going in blind. And, I think that I was correct to not watch the OG show, because… if it was anything as boring as this, I didn't need to see it.

Ben

[sighs] So, the Star in My Mind special is basically just the gang going on a little vacation together, and then New tries to subvert the “You're together now. Let's throw in a jealousy element bit.” Like, you put a note on here that the trope for this one is “trick your friends into going on vacation.”

So, their friends try to tease Daonuea into believing that maybe Kluen has eyes for some girl, and Daonuea gets jealous about this, and then a fight ensues and the friends get all upset. But we in the audience know that the guys are faking this fight. They knew what their friends were up to, but they were kind of flaking on this vacation. So, he uses this fake fight to force them to go on vacation with them.

Whatever.

Like, I think the part of this that was cute was New just throwing away the whole jealousy trope for BL, and then having the gay characters just be like, ‘Yeah, this is stupid. Anyway, we're going to absolutely use this against them because these bitches will not buy their tickets and I'm [gonna] force them to.” And, like, that part was kind of fun.

I'm in my breakup era with New right now. I can see, again, him trying to do something here. New is currently over BL. He’s tired of it. You can feel that in Star in My Mind. Like, he's completely bored with all of this. And so what could have been, like, at least a cute trip, just looks like five straight dudes hanging out in the woods for like an hour.

Nini

I think my notes say “it's two hours of a bunch of dudes vibing without vibes.”

Ben

Yeah, like, it wasn't great, and I don't really like coming for actors like that. But, Dunk is still uncomfortable with on-screen intimacy—or at least it feels like he is—particularly compared to Joong, who does not suffer from being camera shy when it comes to this kind of work. And so while I've seen them in behind-the-scenes stuff, and their variety stuff, and Joong and Dunk are great bros, I'm still struggling with Dunk as a romantic lead because he doesn't kiss well.

Nini

New didn't even phone this in. Like, I think he sent an email? Maybe it was a snail mail.

This was just—it was boring, which I think might be worse than bad? What do we even say about it?

Ben

Nothing! There is nothing to say! Like, Pawin was there. He didn't kiss anybody. [laughs]

Nini

I mean… that's really all that you can say about it. It was a waste of Pawin, like.

Probably the only thing that I enjoyed about this was Joong's several pissy faces when Khabkluen is salty because all his straight friends keep interrupting his gay couple time to hang out when all he wants to do is make out. And, like, the pissy faces that he makes are delightful, and they're the only reason this has a score.

I give it a drama score of 3, because what was it even about? And I gave it a crack score of 4, and all four of those points are for Joong's pissy faces which I thoroughly enjoyed. So, It was a 3.5 for me not because it was bad but because it was boring.

Ben

I think a show has to be offensive to me in some way for me to go lower than 6 and Star in My Mind is not. It's just boring and because I've been in these gay streets a long time, I've been offended. A lot. And, I will accept boring. It's a 6. It's forgettable. We don't have to talk about it anymore.

Nini

And we will not.

Ben

[laughs]

19:20 - Never Let Me Go

Nini

We're going to move on to the actual fun and interesting ones now. [laughs] There's a definite quality bar in Our Skyy 2. There are Vice Versa and Star in My Mind, which are below the quality bar. And then there's everything else, which is above the quality bar. Now, we're talking about games of inches here.

Never Let Me Go. So, the Never Let Me Go fanfic trope for Our Skyy was they did a time travel story that was also a—.

Ben

Fated mates.

Nini

—that was also a fated mates, and also a role reversal, and also like a body hopping. Like, there were—there was a lot going on here. It was not boring. Everybody was clearly having a fabulous time making this. And, I actually really enjoyed it. It was two episodes. I could have watched maybe four to six episodes of this no problem.

This was actually incredibly interesting. It was a lot of fun. Pawin, and Pond especially, clearly had a great time.

Ben

That's true.

[both laugh]

Nini

Pond had a fabulous time. So, the plot of the Never Let Me Go special… You go ahead.

Ben

All right. So, it's been a couple of years since we left the boys in Never Let Me Go, and Nuengdiao has been studying elsewhere. He's coming back to Thailand, and Palm has quietly been setting up shop in Bangkok so that when Nuengdiao comes back to Thailand he can be closer to him. He doesn't want to just stay out by the beach because he wants to see his boyfriend more.

[Cat begins wailing in the hallway near Ben’s mic]

Nuengdiao was a little bit caught off guard by this, and didn't like him making decisions for them. They run into a fortune teller who tells them that if they don't fix what was originally broken, they won't make it in this life, either. And then the fantasy hijinks kick in, where they are sent back in time to their original pairing… into the bodies of their past selves. And in their past—in their first past together where they become a couple—Palm is the rich lord, and Nuengdiao is essentially sold to him as a slave. Also, Pawin is there in an earlier version of his character.

And so they have to play their roles. Palm is having way too much fun bossing Nuengdiao around. And also just trying to have sex with him in the past. Over the course of this they end up realizing that they have to help Pawin’'s character hook up with Mark Pahun's character, and so all of the girlies who've been waiting for that ship to reunite were fed.

Nini is correct. Like, this ended up being really fun, because we got to see Palm and Nuengdiao kind of become like the gays who have it together for other gays.

Nini

It had that crack story but there was also another story going on alongside the crack which I really enjoyed—building on Nungdiao and Palm's actual OG series story—which is that Nuengdiao believes that Palm should make his life about himself, that he should make his decisions about the things that he wants to do without considering Neung. And that they can still be together but Palm shouldn't plan his life around him. When he comes back to Bangkok, it's to tell Palm essentially that he's decided that he's gonna stay away for a longer period of time. He's gonna do graduate school as well.

And, this is actually a conflict between them that sort of leads into the whole time travel thing, but it's actually a really interesting conflict between them because it builds on their series story in a really interesting way. I enjoyed watching them navigate it and figure it out while they were also navigating and figuring out how the hell to get out of the past. I mean the internal logic of the story just about holds together. It's fun. It's enjoyable. It's emotional.

Ben

If he looks at you for seven seconds he's into you and we're all like rooting for this under an umbrella.

Nini

It's fun. It's cute. It's got a little bit of a message to it. It's enjoyable. The characters feel like themselves. At one point we get a little montage of smash cuts of Nueng and Palm: they alternate crying over each other's dead bodies through the ages.

Ben

One of them definitely felt like a nod to Aof’s work where Jojo was poking fun at him.

Nini

They were actually dressed like Jim and Wen in Moonlight Chicken complete with Phuwin wearing sunglasses, his corpse wearing sunglasses at night when he's dead and Pond crying over him. It was really funny. It was delightful. That little smash cut montage was really fun and actually upped the crack score a little. Time travel is crack, no way about it. I was fully going to give it a good crack score anyway. But that little sequence upped the crack score by at least a point. It was just very funny.

And then watching Pawin overexaggerate his “khrub’s” and fall in love with Mark Pahun's character, who's like a jewelry seller at the market. And then when they come back to the present and he's Phum again, they meet Phum at the house—which has been maintained—the lord's house has been maintained throughout the ages.

Ben

Because it had been passed down to his ancestors’ family now because they were all, like, gay besties together.

Nini

Yeah, and like, Phum and Mark Pahun's character are together in this life, too—and they're really cute—and Phum's like, “Yeah, I was a shit to you in high school. I'm sorry about that.” [laughs] It was nice. It was fun. It was enjoyable. I gave it a drama score of 7.5—I think that's reasonable for it. I gave it a crack score of 8.5 so it works out to an 8 for me, which I liked. I liked it.

Ben

I really liked a lot of this. I liked how much fun Phuwin and Pond had in the traditional garb that they were wearing. I like how much fun they had with how often they had to be shirtless. I really enjoyed them writing vows to each other in the past because they didn't know if they would be able to escape. Basically fully committed to each other. That was really beautiful, and not something I expected from Jojo. I was really surprised that Jojo did something that genuinely tender. That really worked for me.

I gave it an 8. It's one of those 8’s where it's, like, if you liked Never Let Me Go, this is going to make it feel a little bit better because the idea that the drama of Never Let Me Go is yet another instance of these two characters trying to be with each other across space and time is super romantic—and that's the kind of shit I love in my big dramas. And I was not expecting this particular show to make me go, “Wow,” [sighs] and look back at the, the original show and go, “Okay. I can see that.”

It was deeply enjoyable. If you liked Never Let Me Go enough, and you feel mildly dissatisfied by it, and you just kind of want some closure to walk away from, watch the special. I felt very good about Palm and Nuengdaio by the end of that, because they felt a little bit more grown. And I kind of like where they left the characters with Palm just being like, “Whatever, I have a rich boyfriend and I've worked very hard. I'm just gonna go hang out with you in Germany for a little while, and then we'll figure it out from there.” And I'm like, more power to you, bro.

Nini

It seemed like yes that they were just going to vibe and enjoy each other, And, after everything that those two went through? Sure! That seems like a great place to leave them.

28:00 - A Boss and a Babe

Nini

Also in the, for me, 8 category—so there is a tie here—A Boss and a Babe. This kind of…surprised me, because I ended up, with the OG show, being really disappointed by where we landed with it. But I really liked the Our Skyy.

Ben

This is a little bit weird because I think in terms of whenever the rest of you hear this. We're actually, I think releasing this before the episode where we talk about A Boss and a Babe. So, spoilers, a bit, for that particular episode, but, uh, we were…less than impressed with A Boss and a Babe.

Nini

For sure.

Ben

However, we actually had a decent time with their Our Skyy outing. Nini why don't you walk us through the setup for this particular outing.

Nini

So, the fanfic trope for the A Boss and a Babe outing of Our Skyy is, I guess, “walk a mile in my shoes” kind of thing? Gun and Cher are happy together. They're sweet loving boyfriends… but the office is in shambles. Because Gun is stressed out and he's stressing everybody at work out. And because Cher knows everybody at work because he used to work there, he has been hipped to the fact that his man is stressing everybody else. And so he goes on a mission to try to get his man to stop stressing everybody at work out.

So, trying to make him understand that he needs to dial it the fuck back. And the way that he eventually comes up with after trying a few other ways, is that they are going to spend a day walking a mile in each other's shoes. So, he is going to spend a day being the boss, and Gun is going to spend a day being the intern so that Gun gets an idea of the stresses that his employees go through. And Cher is just like whatever I'll just be the boss, and Gun is like, “Oh, it's not as easy as you think.”

And it actually turns out really fun and interesting to watch them do this. Of course it's a weird, horny sex thing because everything is a weird, horny sex thing with these two. But [laughs] it's, it's fun. It's light. It's interesting. It's…enjoyable. It's a strong conflict. It's a stronger conflict than we get in the actual OG series. It works. I think it's that because it's so short New doesn't really have time to fuck it up.

Ben

[laughs] So, like, I was frustrated because Gun’s being kind of a difficult boss, but being fairly reasonable about why he's a difficult boss. He's like, “We work in a difficult industry where we spend a great deal of time working on something, and then we release it to the public, and then it can flop. And so I have been funding people's jobs for anywhere from two to 12 months working on a project, and we really need strong turnaround for this because these people's jobs are riding on the success of this. So they do need to take their jobs seriously, and when they are given feedback or are given specific directives, they need to accomplish those directives.”

There's like really interesting tension there between, like, the boss's perspective of, “Y'all can be mad at me, but you want me to cut your checks, right?” versus, “Bro, we are not going to work well under these fucking conditions.” Like, that tension was delivered really well! Gun's perspective comes through in a way that doesn't feel pandering to anyone, and I was like he is a little bit off base in the way he talks to people, but the things he's concerned about are valid for where he sits.

It just pissed me off low-key because, like, we never figured out what Thyme’s whole deal was in the original show. Like, his friend who used to be part of the company. And it feels like that was his job here—was to be like the bridge between Gun and the team. To translate Gun’s directives and frustrations into directives for the team so they could accomplish them and to keep the team motivated. And, like, Cher was helping with that for a while but now that Cher is, like, doing other stuff, like, that has gone away. That's the biggest thing with this one. Like, this was such a solid concept that it made me even more annoyed at how the OG show just sort of fumbled every thread that they were holding.

Nini

Yeah, I have to agree. Like, the workplace conflict on this was really strong and solid, and the workplace stuff in the OG show was kind of weak. And part of the workplace stuff that was great in this was showing that, yeah, Gun does need a balancing force at work. But also, aside from that, surprisingly, Cher is not an idiot. [laughs] Like, Cher is actually pretty competent. He's not, like, ready, clearly, to be the boss of a place like this. But he's not an idiot.

Like, one of the things that happens is that Gun tries to set him up a little bit by having, like, a client come in and try to, like, have a discussion and talk to him about, like, partnering on a game or something and like talking about ideas and all that kind of stuff. And at first you think that Cher is going to blow it. But then he delivers. He comes into the meeting. You know, he takes a minute to get his bearings and understand what's going on, but then he has actual good ideas? And he can speak to the people in a way that works for the business.

So, it shows they could probably at some point in the future after Cher has learned more, they could probably run the business together. Because I think that they bring the different perspectives that's required, but, just like Ben said, that also makes me, like, really mad that we didn't get more of the Thyme stuff in the OG series because, to me, that feels like this was what Thyme’s role was. And that just completely got cast aside. So, on the one hand, I thought this was actually pretty good but, on the other hand, it made me think even less of the OG series and I was already struggling with the OG series.

Ben

[sighs] And that's where we are. It sucks because, like, again, like, Force and Book are good. And the cast of this particular show? Very good. They hold together an otherwise weak show but, man, you just really want to see what that cast looks like when they have a really good show under their belt.

Nini

Yeah, and this gives you, like, a kind of an ‘in’ to that. So my score: this was drama score of 8 because I thought it was a solid conflict. Well executed. I give it a crack score of 8 because, quite honestly, once the whole role reversal thing started. Like, if I worked for Gun’s company, I would have taken, like, vacation until that was over because it was just…It was a little too “bring your kinks to work” for me personally.

[both laugh]

I would have been like, yeah I don't need to see this. I'm gonna take a day off, and tomorrow when I come back, hopefully everything will be normal. Combined like drama score 8 crack score 8 average 8. What did you give it?

Ben

I gave it an 8, and we were joking with some of our other friends about how most of us gave it an 8, and I think it was ginnymoonbeam who was like, “We all gave it an 8, but these are all very different 8s.”

[both laugh]

Nini

Yes, that is definitely true. These are different 8s that we are giving it. My 8 is like, “Damn it. Now I got to go back and revise my score of the OG series and put it even lower.”

36:45 - The Eclipse

Nini

Moving along from the 8s and now we're starting to get into the top of tops. The top top top tops of the Our Skyy pantheon for me. And next up is The Eclipse. Ben, I'm [gonna] need you to give the people what we're talking about here.

Ben

The Eclipse picks up, it feels like, the summer after the boys have graduated from high school. So, they're away from Suppalo—we're not going to deal with any of the Suppalo nonsense anymore. It's just the two couples, Wat, and…Pawin's character for some reason, because he's always palling around them. They're getting together to help Wat shoot for a film project that he wants to submit to a competition. But we pick up, originally, with Akk and Ayan who were doing boyfriend things, and we are seeing the ongoing deprogramming of Akk continuing. And over the course of the filming for this, we see that Akk and Ayan are basically stand-ins for Golf's very complex ideas about the way our private and public lives inform each other, and how both are inherently political.

Akk and Ayan over the course of this are having a struggle about whether or not they should care what other people think. Akk thinks that to be part of a civil society you do have to care about how your actions and behaviors impact other people. Ayan, who has seen what a civil society does to people, thinks that that is bullshit and that he should be more concerned about himself and the people he cares about, and not the nebulous feelings of others. And then calls Akk directly out at one point about how his concern for others turned him into the worst version of a cop possible.

And it gets really ugly when they're working on Wat’s film project. These two are having a truly fundamental struggle about whether or not the two of them are even compatible because they do not see eye-to-eye politically. You get the sense that Ayan hoped that, once freed from the Suppalo prefect thing, Akk would start to see things more his way. And Akk hoped that Ayan would stop fighting with him so much, because Akk really just wants to do soft, cuddly things with his boyfriend. But Ayan gets off on fighting with Akk. [laughs] So he is always antagonizing him for sex reasons.

Nini

It's one of those early relationship conflicts when you're still figuring out how to be with each other. When you're dating at the beginning, you put your best foot forward. In this case, with the two of them, they put their absolute worst foot forward when they were getting together. But there's still that thing about the version of you when you're courting is…different, somewhat, than the version of you when you're not courting. For them, the issue is the version of them when they were courting was exactly who they are, but they didn't think that that was who they were.

So, like you said, Ayan really thought that out of the pressure cooker of Suppalo, Akk would be a different person, and then he's, like, coming to realize: No, this is really just who he is. And Akk is having that same realization about Ayan. They have to decide essentially—and they do decide via Wat's film—whether what they are to each other is worth bridging that gap between them. The answer that they come to is: yes it is—in a really phenomenal scene that I enjoyed so much.

Ben

Let me tell you. First and Khaotung are just really, really good together. Like, it's amazing how they can play these two characters coming to a precipice of fundamental political disagreement to the point that they looked at each other and they're like, “Is this really who I'm going to be with?” And you can see this almost weird resignation as they turn to face each other and embrace, where there are no easy answers to this.

They don't see eye to eye politically on a lot of really fundamental things, and yet they still want to choose each other each time. And that is delivered so well. Like, it's hard to watch The Eclipse with your brain off. I watched a lot of people try to do it during the original show and they struggled, because it is not a brains-off show. Golf has a lot to say about the state of their country and is using whatever platform they have to voice some of these ideas, most notably about how sitting on your phone writing mean tweets is not action. That you need to get into the work. That you have to get into the streets with other people. You have to participate in the work. Even if it's just in the support of getting the people who do do the work the tools and food they need to do the work.

And it's really fascinating that even in this little two-part special, which as far as some people thought, was just First and Khaotung making out for two hours because these boys kissed a lot in this special, they managed to say a lot. Golf managed to express their deep love of Thai cinema with the references that Wat was playing out.

It also managed to get across how much these two boys really like each other, and it was kind of fun to see Akk and Kan working their way out of their internalized homophobia. Like it was not surprising to me that Akk and Kan wanted to do a lot of touching with their boyfriends.

Nini

I really liked how it all came together: how Golf used their love of not just Thai cinema but queer cinema to sort of pull the threads together of the fight that Akk and Ayan were having. The petty fight and the serious fight, because they were having a fight on two levels. They were having a petty fight about—well, maybe not petty—but they were having a surface level fight about Ayan paying attention to Akk and being lovey-dovey and soft with him, versus Ayan wanting Akk to be tougher with him because that's what he likes. And then that going to the deep level of the political, and then, on top of that, that being pulled together by the concept of film. And then even throwing in for us a little side story about Wat and what film means to him, and how he's not necessarily supported by his family—but he kind of is a little bit but mostly not—and how he has things to say and he feels strongly about those things

Like, they managed to do a lot with very little in this special and I really, really enjoyed it. It was very deep for what it was. Very thinkable piece. I really liked it. And then on top of that, they also get to have a little bit of coming-of-age nostalgia moments about leaving high school and moving into the real world. There's so much packed into those two hours. I was really impressed with how much they managed to get in there and have it feel organic.

Ben

I was incredibly impressed by this entire outing.

Nini

I liked the special on its own. I liked it in connection to the OG show. I liked it as a continuation of the OG show. I liked the things that it had to say and the way that it carried through its themes. I was impressed by how much it managed to fit in. I gave it a drama score of 9.5. I really thought it was very, very good.

Ben

But there was singing so she took half a point.

[both laugh]

Nini

I gave it a crack score of 8. The trope really was I guess “secret surprise” because the frame that this is all put in is Ayan preparing a surprise for Akk’s birthday, but it's a secret surprise where he's pretending that he doesn't remember and he's not going to celebrate Akk’s birthday, which is a little weird which is why I took the half point off really, because I hate that secret surprise trope.

Ben

It's one of those things where I don't really like it for Akk, but if fits with Ayan’s sort of, like…Ayan is the queer kid who reads too much theory. Like, he knows more than you. And so he doesn't always see you, specifically. Like, he outs Thua in the first show thinking he's helping him. Like, he kind of is but, like, he outs Thua and oversteps, and it's the same thing here with Akk. Like, he wants to surprise Akk. Like I don't think you should be surprising Akk, because so much of his Suppalo experience is about being guided by the things that are not being said that he's supposed to just interpret.

If you're trying to deprogram him, you need to not do that to him. And the reason why, like I—I mostly let it go is because, as dense as Ayan can kind of be because he's too fucking smart for his own good, when Akk admitted in, like, the first fifteen minutes of the show that he hoped that they were gonna do cute boyfriend frolicking in the fields and taking pictures together, and Ayan was like, “Oh, I thought you were just kidding about that.”

And Akk was like, “No! I was serious.”

It's like, “All right? Well shit! Grab your camera!” And they frolicked!

Nini

[laughs]

Ben

He gave his boyfriend the cute boyfriend shit he wanted to do, even if he teased him a little bit about it first.

Nini

I did like that too. I like that they don't have it together yet but they're willing to listen, and they're willing to do what it takes, I think. But, like I said, I'm knocking out a half a point for the secret surprise because I hate that trope. The crack score is an 8 because there's these set of dream sequences which are homages to Thai film and queer film, and I thought they were delightful. There's the Brokeback Mountain one and then there's the Golden Eagle one which is a Thai film then there's the Ong Bak one which is another Thai film and then there's another—

Ben

If you have not seen Ong Bak and you like action film, please go see Ong Bak.

Nini

I have not watched Ong Bak. Of course, Ben has because he's a boy.

Ben

I am a boy! Tony Jaa is amazing!

Nini

[laughs] I really liked that Golf gets to throw that in there as well. And it's fun. The Golden Eagle one especially is delightful. [laughs] It really is. So that's 9.5 and 8. Let's call that an 8.75. Ooh the maths is coming back! It's coming back! An 8.75 for The Eclipse.

Ben, what’d you give it?

Ben

I gave it a 9 because it's really coherent and that mattered a lot for me, because we had watched a lot of—I don't remember the exact order—but I remember just not being, like, necessarily, like, great at this point because a bunch of them were kind of…stuffed…or boring…and this wasn't. I was fully engaged the whole time, because Golf has such clear ideas in their work and they're all working together at various levels that they really wanted us to not miss.

49:50 - My School President

Nini

Moving on from The Eclipse onto the next rung on the ladder up: My School President. So the My School President fan fiction trope was AU, alternate universe, for all of the characters. I had a fucking blast with this. Ben, explain to the people what happened.

Ben

I'm gonna pre-react to the criticism, unfortunately.

My School President is a high school story about pursuing your long-term crush and the final year of your high school experience. There was no way My School President was going to get an epilogue story. So instead they flipped the seats of a bunch of the characters.

So, in this version of the My School President story, Gun is the school president and Tinn is the member of the school band. This time named Lion instead of Chinzhilla. Instead of Tiwson being the school president's best friend, they keep Por, who is his bestie in this. Tiwson is a member of the band. Sound and Win switch positions in this, where Sound is the long-term member of the band. Win is the new hot boy who shows up who they recruit. They also decide to flip Yo and Pat in the story with each other, even though they're still both in the band. Gim becomes the principal, and Photjanee becomes the operator of the milk ice cream bar.

And in the process of this, like, the same beats from the show. We still hit them, but they play out very differently because the core characterization of these couples don't shift. Which forces us to reckon with certain aspects of the characters that kind of get glossed over in the idealism of the original My School President run. For example, Tinn is so much braver than Gun. Gun is kind of a coward who is gripped by an intense sense of self-doubt, and it starts off almost immediately. Like there's some political commentary with the way Gun is selected as the school president. 250 votes were cast by parents to make Gun the president instead of going through the school voting process instead, which works as a quick shorthand for the show, but also works as a commentary on Thai parliamentary politics.

And so like he's not the school president because he wants to help Tinn. He's just sort of pushed into the position by his mom, and so the moments that they hit along the way, like the dancing together scene. That plays out differently because Gun backs off and ends up dancing with someone else. The whole Questions thing they did to get close to film the thing goes differently because Gun won't ask Tinn directly, but Tinn does ask him, but Gun backs down.

It was interesting because, like, everyone still chose each other. But, like, in a weird way Tiwson and Por were the strong couple of this outing, anchoring for the rest of them.

Like, in the original show Tinn and Gun are so obviously together that the force of their mutual attraction sort of just creates opportunity for the rest of these relationships to bubble up. This time around, Tiwson and Por are working together in the background to help Tinn and Gun get together because they want to come out as a couple. Which I thought was an interesting switch-up as well.

Nini

I really enjoyed that, despite shifting the characters around in terms of their positions and roles, that the cores of the characters remained exactly the same. And you see how the same people living a different life would become a different person. Like you talk about Gun being kind of a coward and he is kind of a coward even in the OG show. Tinn’s the brave one, and Tinn has to be the brave one because Gun's the one who's gonna back down. But also the Gun of the alternate universe—the multiverse of cuteness as it is called—the Gun of the alternate universe hasn't spent his whole life on stage being judged and knocked back. And developing that thick skin that he talks to Tinn about in the OG series, so he is much less resilient than the Gun of the OG series. And that makes a difference in how he navigates his crush on Tinn.

Similarly to that, Tinn in the AU has not had the strictness of the OG Photjanee forced on him the whole time. The strictness and the straight lace-ness because things are a little looser for him. And so he feels more able to take the ball and run with it when he realizes how he feels. They redo the scene of them spending the night at the school and walking around, and this is where Tinn turns the Gun and is like, “Look, do you like me?” which is something Tinn wouldn't necessarily have asked in the OG series.

But then Gun, faced with the opportunity to actually lock it down with his crush. He says no and he runs away which is not a thing that Tinn would have done. If Gun had ginned up the, the actual courage to ask Tinn if he liked him Tinn would have been like [inhales] taken a deep breath and been like, “Hell yell, let’s date.” It's really interesting watching how they take the same characters and, just by moving their positions in the story, they create a story that's different.

Ben

And yet all the people still choose each other. They basically state the big idea at one point. The Gun character says maybe in another lifetime things would have gone better, and the Por and Tiwson of this universe slap that idea down and go, “Yeah, but you're not in those universes. You're in this one. Make the most of the life you have.”

Nini

I really enjoyed this outing. I enjoyed what they took the opportunity of the Our Skyy special to say and to do. I agree with you. I don't think that an epilogue would have worked. My School President is so of its setting. I do not think that moving the boys into college and following them there—I don't feel like I would have been interested in seeing that because that's not the point of My School President.

My tagline for My School President was “perfect high school romance” and I think that's where it should stay.

Okay, so my drama score for My School President was 9.5, and I took off a half point because nobody made out. And, I'm sorry, I am shallow. I wanted somebody to kiss in this special. I didn't care who. Just somebody. So I took off half a point. But the crack score is a 10 because I mean it's an AU. There is nothing crackier than that, so that works out to what, like a 9.75? Yeah, I'm good with that.

Ben

So, I gave this one a 9 because it was a little heady and My School President is not a really heady show for me. But the whole AU concept was. Now, I liked it, but in terms of, like, recommending it to the people who liked My School President, it's kind of hard because they wanted more of what they loved in My School President and this is not exactly that? So, I gave it a 9.

But I'm also with Nini, like nobody kissed in this one. And, again, young actors. I'm totally fine with them not kissing, but…their characters in the original show have really specific kisses, and, if they were more experienced and veteran actors, we would have gotten a different type of kiss from these characters because they are coming at each other very differently. And we don't get to offer that particular comparison here. So, minor knock for me as well.

Nini

We didn't even get to talk about the best part which was them doing a fake music video for a fake Aof song that incorporated Aof’s top three hits in the music videos, which are He’s Coming to Me, Bad Buddy, and A Tale of Thousand Stars.

Ben

We didn't even talk about that.

Nini

Tiw and Por got to do A Tale of Thousand Stars. Sound and Win get to do Bad Buddy. And Gun and Tinn get to do He’s Coming to Me. So they, they paid homage to their granddaddy in "Aof" Noppharnach Chaiyahwimhon. Three of the greatest GMMTV BLs, and also the ones that sort of set the stage for My School President.

1:00:24 - Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars

Nini

Onto the main event, and the main event of Our Skyy 2 was "Aof" Noppharnach giving the finger to GMMTV and saying, “Fuck you, I get four episodes to talk about what I want. And what I want to talk about is queer elders coming to terms with themselves, and I'm going to use anybody I want to talk about that.” AKA the Bad Buddy - A Tale of Thousand Stars crossover event.

Ben, break it down for the people.

Ben

Whereas every other one of these projects except for My School President was in many ways an epilogue this is a mixture of…it's an epilogue or a post-show story for Tian and Phupha, but for Pran and Pat it's set between Bad Buddy episode 11 and Bad Buddy episode 12. It's the senior year for Pat and Pran. They are still closeted and having to keep up the architecture-engineering rivalry, though it looks like they've tried to smooth things over over the years because most of the beef is about who's bringing…brooms to…the charity project now. [laughs] But they're having some consternation because both groups need to put on a play as part of their class president activities, and after the normal Bad Buddy hijinks kick in, Pran reveals that he wants to adapt Tian's diary A Tale of Thousand Stars into a play for the architecture school.

And once they decide to follow this route, their teacher says that, because they don't have permission from the people whose story this actually is, they need to go find them and get said permission. Pran decides that they're going to go to Pha Pun Dao to talk to them directly, tell them how important it is that they want to tell this particular story.

Before they can leave, Pat is forced to hang out with his engineering buddies and, because he has to pretend like he doesn't like Pran, he says something akin to, “That Pran guy. He'd be useless without me. I'm always having to help him.” Pran felt some kind of way about that and decided to leave Pat behind and go to Pha Pun Dao himself—much to his own chagrin—because he loves that boy, and got so nervous when he was walking around by himself without Pat.

And over the course of these four episodes, Pat and Pran learn a little bit more about themselves and their dynamic—but mostly they really help Tian and Phupha work past some really fundamental struggles that they were having as a couple that Pat and Pran realized that they had moved past a long time ago.

This crossover really elevates both works because Aof is obsessed with the idea that queer people make each other better and, by the end of this, we as a fandom seem rather split about it because those of us who liked both A Tale of Thousand Stars and Bad Buddy were able to appreciate how both stories impact each other. But, it seems like if you were really only into one of those stories, you resented the crossover in one way or another.

Nini

I think that's one reaction to it, but, I mean, we've seen among the clowns even people who were really into Bad Buddy but not so into A Tale of Thousand Stars really coming around on Tian and Phupha by the end of the special. I don't think we have like a Vice Versa situation in that, and we can discuss all the reasons that might be, but I think that definitely the crossover has made people who maybe didn't appreciate A Tale of Thousand Stars as much really appreciate A Tale of Thousand Stars and Tian and Phupha more now.

Ben

So where do you want to pick up with the beginning of this discussion?

Nini

I think I want to start with the idea one of our fellow clowns first espoused, and really sort of set me off on this thought process, that this special—this whole crossover—is all about Phupha. Because, of all four characters in the OG shows, the only character who didn't really get an arc was Phupha—this is Phupha’s arc. How do you feel about that as an idea—as a concept?

Ben

Since we're gonna start here, I'm gonna come out swinging.

Nini

Do it.

Ben

If you hate that Phupha is the focus character of this particular special, I need you to examine whether or not you actually care about gay men.

Phupha is a poor, hyper-masculine, closeted gay man, who's older than the other characters. He's about 35 at this point. There are so many queer people out there that you're never going to know about because they cannot live their lives loudly.

We're recording in June right now. Pride month. Phupha’s not gonna show up at Bangkok Pride because 1) he's not coming to Bangkok, and 2) that's just not the place where he feels safe. It's not the place where he feels seen. It's not where all of the quiet gays are gonna go, or where the gays who have to be closeted for one reason or another are going to be. And it's easy to forget them because they're boring or they're less fun.

I like that the story ends up being about: “How do we help Phupha break out of his own shell a little bit and let Tian love him just a little bit more?”

Nini

Phupha is this sort of stoic, very stern, character. I mean they lampooned that a little bit in the OG series for A Tale of Thousand Stars, and they lampoon him a little bit in the beginning of the crossover here, deflating him a little bit—kind of puncturing the whole stoic seme thing. But this is kind of who he is.

This is, as you say, he's older. He's got real responsibilities. He's got a community to protect. He's…got people that he cares about that he needs to take care of. He is not the kind of guy who is going to, like you say, go to Bangkok Pride. He is the kind of guy who maybe has some internalized homophobia that he's dealing with—definitely has some internalized homophobia that he's dealing with. He is that guy who is trying to do the right thing all the time. And so often the right thing means him subsuming his actual desires in some kind of idea of him denying himself being what's best for the community.

And one of the things that the crossover brings forward, particularly in the person of Pat, who is diametrically opposed to the idea of subsuming himself for anybody. He only does it for Pran, and only, like, grudgingly. But, to put somebody like Pat, who is just loud and proud and just completely does not care about any ideas of masculinity or propriety or anything like that, and put that character in conversation of any kind with Phupha. It's so delightful to watch that happen because, of course, Pat immediately gloms onto him. He follows him around like a duckling—he imprints on him.

He's like, “Oh, yes, Stern Daddy. I really, really like this vibe that you're givin’ off here. I'm just going to follow you around and bother the fuck out of you.”

I think it was wen-kexing-apologist who said that Pat's entire job in the special is to terrorize the local elder gay. I Love it.

Ben

Pat and Pran. They both looked at Phupha, looked at each other, and then both said at the same time ‘WOULD.’

[both laugh]

Nini

I did see that. That was funny because it's true. They hang a lampshade on it at two points 1) when Pran runs into Phupha for the first time—him really having, like, a gay boy moment. [laughs] Like, the whole, like, slow-motion, turn-around, like, gasping gay boy moment.

Ben

He's read the, the diary and he's like “I get it.” Immediately!

[both laugh]

Nini

And then, to have Pat's moment come, where—because Pat's flirtation language is competition. So, of course he basically challenges Phupha to a duel in the form of a drinking contest. And then they wake up shirtless next to each other and think that they might have maybe…done something—

Ben

They definitely did some stuff.

Nini

They made out. Just a little bit. They kissed a little bit.

But I—I loved that! I loved that they were both really into him. Like it was clear that they were both attracted to him. It was very gay and very fun. But also they're just like, “No, I get it.” They—they both looked and they were just like, “Tian, I get you. I understand why you live in this village with [both laugh] no running water, and you have to sleep under a mosquito net every night. I get you! I understand you because, for this man, I would do these things.” Like, they get it.

It's kind of delightful.

Ben

I like how, when Pran first gets to the village, and Phupha passes out, Tian runs up and Pran’s like ‘who are you’ and Tian's like, “No. Who the fuck are you?”

[Nini laughs]

Ben

And, like, if Tian had been allowed to have a knife…

Nini

Pran would have been stopped at that point—fully stabbed. “Like, who the fuck are you and why are you talking to my man?” [laughs] Like, Tian lives in the village because he doesn't want anybody else to see Phupha.

[both laugh]

Nini

Because he knows the minute any of these whores take a look at his man, if it's going to be a problem.

Ben

In terms of the serious stuff. So, they've shown up to convince them to sign these papers. Going into this Pat and Pran are fighting a little bit because Pran feels guilty, and part of this journey for him was maybe seeing, like, if he actually needed Pat as much as he does. And he learns very quickly that he is not at his best without Pat.

It's funny because Pat always knew this. Pat seemed to know already. Like, he says it in like episode 5 of Bad Buddy that he was not at his best when Pran was gone.

But Pran wants to prove he doesn't need Pat's help, and when Pran shows up to try and convince him to sign Tian's like, “Fuck yeah! I wrote the diary so people would…maybe want to become teachers and appreciate what I have out here. Absolutely!” Phupha's like, “No, y'all not going to present me as some lovesick fool on your little stage.”

And then Pran tries to talk to Phupha a couple of times and fails massively at it. Tries to lie to Phupha. And then Pat blocks the shit out of that by calling out the bullshit right away, because he's pissed at Pran for running off without him. So he's sabotaging some of Pran's efforts. And it isn't until the two of them start working together that they actually start making any fucking progress because…that's who they are.

Nini

But I think there's also, like, a really valid point to the fact that Pran—he tries to talk to Phupha about it at first and Phupha is not having it. You're right. But one of the reasons that Phupha is not having it is because he's looking at these kids and he's thinking, “These kids do not understand me. These kids have no idea of what my life is like. These kids have no idea of what our lives are like. These kids have never faced any kind of serious challenge. These are two dumb kids. I'm not gonna give them time of day. They don't get to tell my story.”

And then, by the end, the thing that actually gets Phupha to agree to let them tell his story…is Pran actually dropping the bullshit—as you said—and saying to him, “You think I don't know what it's like to feel insecure? You think I don't know what it's like to feel like my partner deserves better than me? You think I don't know what that feels like? Oh, believe you me, I know what that feels like.”

And, because at this point Phupha has spent an enormous amount of time with Pat, he's like,

“Okay, yeah, maybe you do understand what I'm going through.”

And the way that that works out in the end—and I mean we're kind of skipping back and forth through the story at this point—but the way that that works out at the end is Phupha saying, “Okay, you get to tell my story, but you have to tell my story because you understand me.” His condition for signing off on them doing the play is that they play the roles of him and Tian, because they understand him. I thought that was really—a really great way to follow that thread through the story. I really enjoyed that part.

Ben

I like the subtle way Aof played with our expectations about who would identify with who. Like, they made Tian and Pran resemble each other. Tian was like, “Fuck this twink,” right away as soon as Pran showed up.

[Nini laughs]

But then, like, Pran helps him. Pran helps him in the class and Tian softens very quickly to Pran.

Because of how physically macho Pat is—like, there's this expectation that he and Phupha are gonna be super similar to each other—and there's an interesting subtle commentary that Aof does there in that it's the more creative one, who's way too close to his mom, who's more like the hyper-masculine dude, because both of them are masking in their lives.

Like, Phupha is hyper-masculine because that's what's expected of him. And like people pick at Phupha about this a little bit, but he is trying to live up to the role that he is told he's supposed to fulfill. And Pran also suffers under the expectations of who his mom expects him to be, and it's interesting for me that Aof, over the course of these three episodes when they're all together, Aof says Pran and Phupha have more in common because they are carrying so much homophobia on their shoulders, and that's why the two of them probably understand each other best.

Nini

Using the yaoi tropes again, a talk about who is the seme and who's the uke in the story in terms of who's the pursuer and who's the pursued, and…if you look at it, like, then you can clearly see that it's Tian and Pat who are aligned because Pat pursued Pran and Tian pursued Phupha. They are the semes even though it seems that Tian would be an uke. He's not. He actually pursued Phupha.

So in the narrative sense. He's the seme. It's just very fun, this playing with the idea of what is a seme and what is an uke. And, again to use the yaoi terms—which you know I don't like to use ‘cause I don't really know the yaoi or rock with the yaoi. But, that idea of who is…pursuing the relationship, leading the relationship—like that's Tian and that's Pat.

And in terms of who is being pulled along by their partner in a kind of a way that's Phupha and that’s Pran. So, I do like how Aof leans into this…because again, it subverts expectations in a particular kind of way. But also it makes so much sense.

Ben

There's two subtle things that I really want to point out, and I want to talk about them a little.

First, Pat and Pran use titles for Tian and Phupha the whole time. And the other thing is about how nobody really knows anything about anybody in this. So, like, we're gonna call them Tian and Phupha, Pat and Pran, because we're inside of these people's stories with them. But it's interesting to me that Pran and Pat never cross a familiarity line with Tian and Phupha in the brief time they're with them. They refer to them as Teacher and Chief only the entire time.

Nini

I like that because it's a nod to their roles as adults because Pat and Pran are still kids. They're still college students, and Tian and Phupha are adults to them. But, in some ways, Pat and Pran have progressed much further in their relationship than Tian and Phupha have because they've been through more—just from the nature of their whole history. And they've crossed barriers and boundaries and, and parts of their relationship that Tian and Phupha are just confronting or haven't even confronted yet. And I liked that.

I liked, also, that interplay of the younger ones being the ones to teach the older ones something. I really like that because I feel like that's what's happening now not just in—not just in queer circles—because that's definitely happening in queer circles. But also just in terms of generalization. Like, if you're not a complete douche and you're our age—well I say our age. I'm about 10 years older than Ben. Not ten, but…when you've crossed a certain Rubicon in the adulting game. Let's put it that way.

Right now. The kids are teaching us like a whole bunch of stuff as long as you're not a dick, like, and you remain open, the kids can teach you all kinds of shit that you never thought was possible to learn about yourself at this stage in your life. And I really like that Aof played with that because Aof’s about my age, and I like that he is the kind of person who understands that the young uns have things to teach us as well. Like, we have things to teach them—clearly and obviously—and we want to make a better world for them—clearly and obviously. But also, there's so much shit that we can learn from them when it comes to just fucking unclenching, because that's what happens here! Like, all of this is in service of Phupha just fucking unclenching.

Ben

And this is what I mean about having other queer people, like it isn't just about your boyfriend. You need queer friends. Like, Tian blossoms almost immediately when he realizes that Pat and Pran are a couple—that they're not just friends. As soon as Pat flirts with him a little bit at breakfast and Pran shoves a spoon into his mouth, you can see Tian instantly relaxes and it's like, “Okay” and is more receptive to what these two are here for. And for Phupha. Like, yeah, it's one thing to just be into Tian and that be a thing, but to have someone like Pat roaming around actively flirting with him all the time, that also forced Phupha to reckon with who he is.

And it's funny, because, like, Pat and Pran are actually closeted. They basically, like, admit it to Tian and Phupha as a sort of a de facto thing. But, like, the two of them are away from the world where they have to hide. So they're on top of each other. They're constantly touching each other. They're flirting constantly…

Nini

They're fucking in the tent twenty feet away from them. [laughs]

Ben

We'll get there in a second. We’ll be there in a second. [Nini laughs] But they're so obviously obsessed with each other. And like Nini said, like during the rescue bit, Kampung is not in the tent with them where he's supposed to be. And so the boys are like, “Oh, I guess the kid decided to go stay with Phupha and Tian. Great! My foot is hurting me because I twisted my ankle, but let's get it in!” And then in the morning Pat limps to breakfast asking, “What's my score for last night?”

Nini

I love that they just fuck their way through all their problems. It's delightful. I enjoy it.

Ben

One of the sad things with Tian and Phupha is…they have to keep waiting for the other person to be asleep to be affectionate with them, and that's one of the big things that I'm really glad that they start to work through towards the end of this. Like, I'm really proud of Phupha for listening to the man who he loves, and the person who is inspired by the man who he loves.

Like, it’s so fascinating. Like—like Pran ran on this whole trip thinking he was Tian, met Phupha, realized he was Phupha, and was able to reach across that gap and say, “Please trust me. We got you.” And Phupha said, “Okay.”

There's a lot of consternation in the fandom right now about taking score between Pat and Pran about who sacrifices more, or what should or shouldn't be said. I'm not particularly interested in that particular conversation. Pat and Pran love each other. They're adults. They've committed to each other. Sometimes you're gonna be with other gays and you're not going to understand how they work, and you just have to accept that their dynamic is their dynamic. It's not about who wins. It's about who cares for you—and they clearly care for each other.

Nini

I think part of what it is, as well, is—it sounds bad, but go with me on this right? I am a great proponent of therapy. I believe in it. I am in therapy. I have been in therapy for years. I recommend therapy to everybody. But there is a certain level of therapized that I think is not necessarily good for us…And that is as somebody who believes in the power of therapy to change and save lives. I think that this idea that everything is pathologized, that you always have to be on the lookout because somebody's trying to get you in some kind of way—I think that it can be harmful to relationships and to our understanding of relationships in certain ways, because not everything that is unbalanced or imbalanced is harmful.

And I think that one of the problems that I'm having with…not so much the show, but the fandom reaction to it is…that yes, Pat and Pran’s relationship looks unbalanced from the outside. It probably is unbalanced in certain ways. But that doesn't mean that it's harmful. But there's this idea that because of—again this is a, a therapized lens that unbalanced equals harmful, and I don't think that's necessarily the case.

One of the things that I really don't grok onto and, to be fair…I am very…I am a Bad Buddy fun. I am a Pat and Pran fan. I am a fan of the characters separately and together. And one of the things that…I am really personally sticky and icky about is this idea in certain parts…that Pat and Pran do not love each other equally, or Pran does not love Pat enough, or Pat loves Pran more—all these ideas of particular kind of imbalances between them. And my whole thing is—Who are they and what do they need and what do they want from each other? What does Pat actually need from Pran? Is he getting it? He absolutely is.

So this idea of keeping score between the characters—or keeping score in relationships in general if you, if you broaden out to the idea of relationships—I feel like it doesn't serve. I feel like it's…reductive. And I feel like looking at these characters through that lens is not the way that Aof is portraying these characters, or wants the audience to look at these characters. Because I think that Aof is a person who is…very tuned into certain ideas that he wants to portray—certain things that he wants to portray about queerness and queer community and queer relationships—and…I think that to reduce probably the greatest queer relationship that he has put on screen in Pat and Pran to score keeping, when score keeping is a part of their history that they have deliberately stepped away from because they were forced into it. I feel like it misunderstands what he's trying to do and say with these characters…

And that's just my opinion, and I will admit a hundred percent that I am very precious about these two particular characters. I'm very precious about a lot of Aof characters because I feel that Aof writes characters in a way that I understand them intrinsically. But these two characters in particular I feel very precious about. And, I feel like to see them like that in the context of somehow keeping score between them is to not see them at all.

Ben

Pat only cares about one score and he asks Pran for it directly every morning.

Nini

And that's a fact. [laughs]

Ben

And that's the big thing for me! Like, they were kind of having a fight and most of it was Pran’s insecurity because Pran is a little bit embarrassed about what he's asked Pat to do for him. And they get over that almost immediately. They get to Pha Pun Dao. They see Tian and Phupha and they're like, “Oh, man. These guys are older than us, but they're like…four episodes behind us. [laughs] So, we got to catch these gays up quick!” And they—they instantly get over whatever their beef is and they start playing out their kinks the way they always do. They start cosplaying as Tian and Phupha…and flirting with each other.

Nini

And they do in the end have a little bit of a resolution to their…really not much of a fight, fight. And, there's two resolutions, really.

The first resolution is the resolution they get in Pha Pun Dao which is, “Look, I can't fucking live without you, and you can't fucking live without me, and we agree on that. So, let's dead the shit.” And they did! And it was fine, because the shit was never really live in terms of a fight being live in the first place. They were fucking their way through that whole fight…and that's how they deal with things, and it works for them, and it's fine.

And then they get a second resolution that Phupha gives them—a gift—which is, “I get to be in the open with you, even if it's just on stage. I get to be a lover in public.” And it works for me.

Ben

They even tried to redeem Wai a little bit.

Nini

It's still fuck Wai forever in these parts.

Ben

[laughs] He doesn't drop the curtain this time. Instead, he's like, “Give the people the kiss they need!”

Nini

It's still fuck Wai forever in these parts. [laughs]

Ben

And it's interesting, too, in terms of that particular gift. It works out in a couple of ways because Phupha gets to see a bunch of people react to their story. People are loving it. Lesbians are crying over them. One of the lesbians is moaning, “Why don't they just fuck already!”

[both laugh]

Ben

He gets to see people love them through this play, and then this gives Pran something that he's wanted: Pran his on socials after the play seeing people making fanvids about him and Pat. Which is something that he wants. He wants to be in the open with Pat because he knows that's what Pat wants, and this is the closest they're gonna get for now. And he is relieved to just see that.

But again, Pat is not worried about that. He's like, “Oh good, good. Did you get what you want?” and he's like, “All right. Let's stop fucking around with all this other stuff. Can we kiss as ourselves now?”

And they do!

Nini

We've talked a lot about Pat and Pran here and we've kind of scratched the surface on Tian and Phupha. But I really want to get into Phupha because the main thing that the special is doing is unlocking Phupha for the audience, because—like I said—all the other characters have had their arcs in the OG series that we're looking at. Only Phupha has really been holding the line, so to speak.

And this is Phupha's unveiling. It's his opening. This is Phupha getting harassed by a baby gay. Terrorized, actually, by a baby gay. Realizing that, “Oh my god. The baby gays came to town, and they fucked in a tent twenty feet away from us, and the world didn't fucking end. So maybe…I, too, can fuck my man and the world won’t end.”

[both laugh]

And then he proceeds to do just that.

Ben

I really like the way Aof went about doing it. Phupha primps himself up, rents an expensive vehicle, picks up Tian, and then goes with Tian to a cute cafe and lets Tian show him off a little bit, even if it made him a little bit nervous to be fawned over.

Nini

He let Tian, like, dress him up! Like, he let Tian take him shopping! He let Tian babygirl him a little bit. He let Tian spend a little money! It was nice!

Ben

That felt like a big deal because he mentioned it. He's like the money on one of these dishes could feed the village for a week in Pha Pun Dao, but he lets it go. Tian is actually a rich kid. This is part of what Phupha knows Tian gave up to be with him and so, when they're in Bangkok, he relents. He lets Tian dress him up like a Ken until Tian is satisfied with the look. And unsurprisingly, Tian chooses something very sleek, masculine, and comfortable for Phupha.

And then Phupha shows up and meets the parents. This is a huge deal too because Phupha was nervous about this because he feels like he took their son from them, and that he overstepped because Tian's dad was once a superior in the military. And all they say is, “We're gonna give you the thing that's most important to us. Take care of it.” And they acknowledge his filial piety to his father when Tian—when Phupha—admits that the reason he's a forest ranger is because his dad loved that mountain and felt a need to take care of it and the people who maintain it. And they were like, “Respect that.”

And then he proposes!

Nini

Okay y’all know how I feel about the BL weddings and the BL proposals. Y’all know that I am usually kind of, like, sitting in the corner, like, with my hands over my eyes. But this one, y'all, I was deep in my feelings. The tears came out. It was beautiful. I fucking loved this proposal. It was perfect.

Ben

I think I liked it because it wasn't a grand gesture in front of a bunch of people.

Nini

That's exactly why I liked it. [laughs]

Ben

It was for them. It was Phupha finally saying that he wasn't going to hold back anymore, and then they had loud obnoxious sex in the hotel room.

Nini

I just like that the loud obnoxious sex started like way before this. Like, the loud obnoxious sex started—like the idea of loud obnoxious sex of course was started by Pat, because that's Pat's entire brand. When he was walking around in the forest with Phupha, like, pretending to worry about Pran when he knows Pran is gonna be fine, and telling Phupha, like, “I mean I'm just going to sniff him out and, like, what do you mean you're not going to sniff out your man. Like, don't you know what he smells like? He smells so good.”

[both laugh]

Ben

You know, I don't think that's underlined really loudly in the show but like Pat says it quite plainly to Tian. He's like, “We don't need to go roaming around. Phupha’s experienced and good at his job, and Pran's really smart. We should really just stay here.”

[both laugh]

Like, nobody believes in Pran more than Pat.

Nini

Nobody. Absolutely nobody. Pat is like, “Listen. He's gonna be fine. I'm not particularly worried about him.” Like, both times. Both when he was wandering around in the woods with Phupha and when he was trying to get Tian to sit his ass down and be a heart patient like he's supposed to be. Both times he's just like, “I am not worried about Pran. Like, can we just focus on what the real problem is here. The real problem here is that your man is going unsniffed. Y’all are having a fight that y'all don't need to be having.”

I loved Pat’s whole energy in Pha Pun Dao. He was just like, “I'm just gonna vibe. I'm just glad to be here. I like being able to be out in the open with Pran. We are literally a million miles away from Bangkok. I can just be out here and just love on Pran the way that I feel like lovin’ on Pran—”

Ben

“I'm here to test the structural integrity of the teacher's house.”

Nini

All of that! “I'm here to fuck in a tent and ask the next morning if I did good.” He was just vibing the entire time, and then he got the bonus vibe of running into Phupha who he has—I'm sorry—a major fucking crush on. He does. It’s canon. We're gonna leave it at that. He brought the sex pest fairy godmother energy to Pha Pun Dao, and he's just like, “Listen, y'all are having a fight. Have you tried fucking about it? I have found that to be a very—”

[Ben laughs]

“—I found that to be very helpful method of solving problems. Y’all should just fuck! Give him a good old sniff. He smells real good. Have you noticed that?”

And it works! Like, Phupha at first is like, “Oh my God, get this kid away from me.”

Ben

Pat said, “Dick is not magical. It doesn't fix you. But! You look like you could use a little bit of a stress release.”

[both laugh]

Nini

And he's not wrong. And I love that despite the fact that Phupha spends the entire time being like, “Oh my God, child, get away from me. You are so annoying.” The minute Patt leaves, he's just like, “Okay. I'm [gonna] try what the kid said.”

And he does it!

Ben

He goes back to all of their most romantic moments that he downplayed previously and gives them to Tian. Tian doesn't even know what to do with it at first because they've been so cold for a while.

Nini

He takes Tian back to the waterfall, and he's just like, “You said that I sneaked to look at you and I did but I ain't sneaking now! I'ma look.” And then he goes further than that. He said, “Not only am I going to look. I am going to make sure that you get a good look.”

Ben

[singsong] Take a good hard look!

Nini

And like, like you said at first Tian is like, “What is happening here?” because Phupha is being so open, which I don't think he's ever been before.

Ben

And, like, Phupha was kind of manipulative about it because he made Tian relent and so Tian thought he was being, like, punished at first. Like, Phupha was teasing him because Tian's never made his attraction really quiet.

And then they finally get the stern dicking they've been needing. And Phupha…steals a line from the kids: “What's my score for last night?”

Nini

It was so fun. And Tian is just like, “Your what?” Like, Tian is fully enjoying this and I love that for him because one of the things I think people forget throughout the course of A Tale of Thousand Stars is that the Tian who starts the tale—he's sexy! Tian at the beginning of the story, he's got this edge to him. The sexy edge, and that kinda gets whittled away a little bit in Pha Pun Dao. But, that's still who he is.

And I like that at the end of the tale when we get here to the epilogue that he gets to be that again. He gets to pull out that sexy edge that is part of him and use it on his man. Like, he babygirls him, he takes him shopping, and then, when he lookin’ all nice, he leans into him and he be like, “You're real handsome. Do you have a boyfriend?” And I'm just like this is Tian! This is Tian that I remember!

Ben

And then he pushes Phupha in that bed, and he's like, “I've been waiting for five years. I'm ‘bout to get what's mine.”

[both laugh]

Nini

Phupha’s like, “What are you doing?” He's like, “Don't worry about it.” [laughs]

Ben

He’s like, “Don't worry about it, babygirl. I’ma take care of you tonight.”

[both laugh]

Nini

And I love that. I love that so much. Phupha is, like, panicked about it for a minute, and he's like [sighs]. He's decides. He's like, “Let go, let flow.” He's like, “All right. This how you want it?” and Tian's like, “Uh-huh,” and he's like, “All right, let's do this!” [laughs] I loved It. I loved it so much.

I love that at this stage of his life Phupha just learns to like—you know what? He's like, “Sometimes you just gotta un-fucking-clench.” And he just, he lets it all go.

Ben

I don't usually like talking about sexual positions around here because…of the way people project onto them, but I really like the implication in the final scene that this might be the first time Phupha really switches with Tian in a way that's also him emotionally… because you do have to unclench if you want to enjoy that particular act.

Nini

[laughs] In more ways than one!

Ben

It works really well because of the proposal. Like, Phupha's putting it all in the line. He's actually putting himself on the line. And he's going to be a complete partner to Tian, and is also going to relent and let Tian have some of the things that he wants.

Like Tian is happy in Pha Pun Dao. He doesn't hate their lives there. He just says, “I want you to come home and see my parents once a year. It's important to me. I just want you to come down for that. And when we're here, let me treat you nicely.”

Like, even if their lives aren't gonna always be there—like Tian may someday have to take care of the responsibilities of his parents getting older. But, I feel better about them facing that now as two people who are fully committed to each other than Phupha’s whole waiting-for-the-other-shoe-to-drop thing all the time.

Nini

I just…really liked…getting to see…Phupha just…be… We never get to see him just be. Once he internalizes what Pat and Pran say to him, at every point from then what we see is him getting to just be. Yeah, in a slutty way—which I personally enjoy. But also just not worrying so much about what the things he's doing say about him. And yeah, there are, like, moments of that, like, when they get to the play and the curtain goes up, you see him starting to, like, freak out a little bit. But as the play goes on he relaxes.

I like that he leans into both the relaxed energy and the slutty energy, because I feel like the slutty energy is incredibly important. Like, one of the things that I really enjoyed about the final episode of the crossover was that mosquito net moment because—

Ben

Oh my God…finally.

Nini

That's so many things! That's Aof acknowledging that he was maybe slightly too precious with their sexuality in A Tale of Thousand Stars. That's Aof acknowledging that, maybe yeah, they should have kissed there. That's also Phupha acknowledging a bunch of stuff. That's also Tian getting to recast those moments in his mind.

Ben

I also love that Aof basically gave them the Bad Buddy post-credits scene.

Nini

Now, everybody’s saying that, but to me I just remember that the A Tale of Thousand Stars post-credits scene wasn't sideways either. Like, they wrastled in that A Tale of Thousand Stars post-credits scene. Like, Tian had to ask for the dick but he got it.

Ben

I'm just very satisfied by the outing this time.

Nini

I really, really enjoyed it, and I think that a lot of the Sturm und Drang around it is because of these ideas—again once again—these ideas about balance, and feeling like it was maybe unbalanced between Pat and Pran, and Tian and Phupha. But I don't think those ideas of balance are relevant to what Aof was trying to do here. I think that using Pat and Pran—who are a solid, established couple who we know are pulling through anything because we've seen their future already—using them as a conduit, or a catalyst, or a support to pull Tian and Phupha through a hurdle that could break them. I was fine with it in the end.

Like, I went through a lot of like—you know. I mean, you know because you were in these discussions with me and you and the clowns, like, sort of pulling through, like, how we feel about this.

Ben

Everybody else is having a difficult time. I was vibing so hard for like—[laughs] for like two weeks! Everybody else is like, “Oh I don't like this episode!!” Like, everybody was mad after episode 3! Me…I thought that episode was great. They're like, “I hate how long they were lost in the woods.” I'm like, “Well, that was the whole point.”

They were lost in the woods. They were all circling around an issue, and the issue is really simple. Like, just sit still and let other people find you. Because that's what you need to do, baby gays, sometimes, it's sit still so we can fucking find you! And help you!

[both laugh]

Ben

All right! Let's talk about the actors.

Nini

Watching these four get to vibe together. I want to see it. And not just the four of them vibing together, but…the…pairings because they gave us like a mix and match. So, they gave us every single pairing that you could get out of these four actors, and everyone was delightful and delectable. And I enjoyed every single one of them, but I particularly enjoyed pairing Ohm with Earth.

Ben

I really liked… the pairing of Nanon and Mix, and I don't know what we need to do to see those two work together again, but I would like to see the two of them take on meaty characters together.

Nini

I mean they're gonna be in The Jungle together.

Ben

Are they? Well well well…

Nini

Yeah, maybe you might have to watch The Jungle. [laughs]

Ben might have to watch a straight show!

Ben

No…we just did that! It sucked!

[both laugh]

Ben

I loved Mix in this. Like, we've seen MIx and Earth together a couple of times, and you talked about this during episode two. Their drunken walk home together felt like Phupha and Tian, not Jim and Wen.

Nini

They made it feel so different, even with similar framing, even with similar camera work, even with the same actors, and the same director. They made that moment feel completely different from Jim and Wen's moment doing the same activity, and I—hats off, I bow down. I appreciate actors—y’all know that.

Ben

I like how all four of them managed to make their dynamics feel lived in.

Like, Pat and Pran felt settled. Like, they have some long-term difficulties to deal with—some of which are never gonna go away—but it was kind of interesting for me knowing that they're rock solid by the end of BB 12 that you can see them starting to get there now. Where Pran is nervous that this can't work forever because Pat is too loud. He…needs to be loud about stuff.

But, like, you can see the signs here of them giving themselves openings. Here, like with the play, with Pat going home to his dad later and giving him the liquor that Pran got in Singapore, loudly climbing through Pran's window when he comes back to Bangkok…to go play with his guitar in his room.

Nini

Pat needs to be loud. Pran knows Pat needs to be loud. And the journey that they're setting off on through the special—I can't even say that it culminates in Bad Buddy 12 ‘cause it doesn't. It continues in Bad Buddy 12, but it culminates at some point in a future that we don't get to see. And there's something to be said about Aof putting that way-way off…and the things that he wants to say to the baby gays and the elder gays.

Hoo! Man, I've been feeling Aof lately. Like, Moonlight Chicken, like, unraveled something in me. And going back to some of his earlier works in the light of Moonlight Chicken because part of the whole point of the crossover—and of crossovers in general—but in this particular crossover is intertextuality. When we were talking about Bad Buddy. When we were, like, thick in the things of Bad Buddy. We're talking about text and subtext and metatext working together to tell this story, and the thing that didn't become a part of that story—there were hints of it, mostly in the Pa and Ink storyline—but the thing that was hinted at, but not really fully grasped onto, was intertextuality.

Like, the conversation that different pieces of art are having between themselves. And one thing that this special—that the crossover delves into now—is the intertextuality.

Ben

I particularly like it because you have two leads interacting with each other and I find that sometimes we can get a little too archetypical about the leads of shows. By forcing the audience to consider who Pat and Pran are relative to Tian and Phupha, it forces you to revisit how you've been viewing them the whole time. Like, Pran thinking that he was Tian, and us maybe getting a little too caught up in that. Because, like we called it at the end of the first episode! We're like, “Why does he look so much like Tian? That feels off.” And it was off!

Oh. I wasn't trying to make a pun there.

He's not like Tian. Like, as soon as I saw them I was like, “Why would they compare him to Tian? He doesn't feel like Tian to me?” I was right! And so, we get to the end of this whole shebang, and I am having a blast. Like I'm watching people having to sort themselves out like “Did I like this? Did I not like this?”

I was drinking a mojito, having a good time, after this ended. I was drunk at the reception hanging out with some lesbians.

Nini

I mean in the end is it not the place that you want to be? I feel like it all worked out super well, and one of the reasons that it worked out super well is that these two stories had to be in some ways told together. And yeah, one got a little subsumed to the other. But that's the way that it had to be at this point in time.

Ben

I think it was pragmatic.

Nini

Yeah, I think if we had caught up with them and done this crossover at a different stage in each of their relationships a different problem would have come to the surface, and maybe a different arrangement of the two couples might have happened. And that's also something that we need to think about in terms of the specifics of when in the story narrative and the timeline of the stories that Aof chose to set this particular crossover.

When it comes to Aof I'm always thinking about what he's trying to do, because one of the things that has been very clear to me throughout his oeuvre, but particularly in Bad Buddy, is that…he is always going to tell the story that he wants to tell. He's not overly concerned about making it fit into certain narrative structures. He's not overly concerned about making it fit into audience expectations. He wants to tell certain stories, and that's what he's gonna do. And that was made very clear to me with Bad Buddy 12, because that defied every narrative expectation—every audience expectation—to speak a truth that Aof had on his spirit.

Ben

The other thing for me—this is the part where I’m gonna get a little bit grumpy again. It is expensive to make television. Like, the biggest thing that stands out to me with all of Our Skyy is how stripped-down all of it looked.

Like they filmed in like one or two locations at most it felt like half the time, and they had really short filming schedules, and everybody had to be good very quickly. There's not a lot of runup time. It feels like people just brought whatever they still had left from the last performance and they just ran with it. Everybody had to be really good, and it's expensive to film on that mountain. And so Aof needed to justify that particular crossover, by using the most potent talent he had.

Like, there's a huge Bad Buddy fandom. There's a pretty solid contingent of people who like A Tale of Thousand Stars. And for A Tale of Thousand Stars to get something good, he needed to merge the Bad Buddy budget with the Thousand Stars budget.

But also, they didn't want to touch their ending, which is why he sets Bad Buddy before its ending, but Tian and Phupha only at the beginning of their romance when we leave them. They have more work to do, so they can have an epilogue story that really hammers into some really interesting stuff, which we just spent the last hour or so talking about.

But it's done really efficiently! Like for the most part we all seem to enjoy Our Skyy, and they manage to do that with their limited budget. Like Pat and Pran are in a different room because it's probably cheaper to use this room. There's less people in Pha Pun Dao this time. Au is running around in the background as an extra! Wasn't he the damn director of the Kwan and Riam play? [shushes] Don't pay attention to that. A bunch of guys are running around with masks on—that's probably just crew members!

Nini

I did sort of love that chewing gum and string energy these productions can bring that is really sort of the heart of the Our Skyy franchise. I feel like I like that because to me that means it's for the art. If you're going to do this on chewing gum and string it's because you really fucking care. Like if you're going to do a story like this on string and chewing gum, it's because you really want to tell this fucking story. And in the end that's where I land on the vast majority of Our Skyy 2.

Ben

So what's our final verdict on Our Skyy then? Worth it? Not worth it?

Nini

Before we get to our final verdict on our Our Skyy, we didn't give our final verdict on the crossover.

Ben

Oh, it's a 10. [slams desk and laughs]

Nini

It's a 10! It's a 10! It's a 10! Let's just—let's just—let's let it go. Right? It's a 10 for drama and a 10 for crack because what is more cracky than a crossover? And so it averages out to 10. Have I got quibbles with it? Yes. Do they, in the grand scheme of things, matter to my enjoyment of it? Absolutely not. It's a 10—point blank period.

Ben

It didn't waste my time. They set out a really interesting premise: what if Tian published his diary? What if “lonely queer looking for meaning and community” Pran found it? What if he met them? What do they do if they meet each other? Like, they follow through on that in a way that gave us so much to talk about for two weeks.

And it was fun seeing the whole fandom come alive and see people revisit characters! It was fun seeing people change their opinions on Phupha, and even Earth and Mix as the result of watching this. That was so much fun.

Nini

It was delightful. It was enjoyable. It was meaningful. It was narratively enjoyable at least for me, it was a 10. I loved it and one of the things that I love most about it is that Pat gets to lick Pran's finger this time.

Ben

Oh my god.

Nini

I mean, it's just the slutiness of it all! Pat gets to lick Pran's finger. Phupha gets to touch his titties in a sexy kind of way. They get to make out with that damn mosquito net, and I enjoyed every single second of it. I laughed, I cried, I…felt warmth deep inside.

1:59:13 - Overall Score for Our Skyy 2

Nini

All that said, in terms of the overall—let’s give an overall score for Our Skyy 2. Ben, what do you think?

Ben

With the caveat that you should only really engage with the Our Skyy content if you liked the original show, it's a 9.

Like, I didn't like Vice Versa and I didn't like Star in My Mind when I watched them the first time, and so everything I didn't like about those shows was present in their Our Skyy offerings. I don't think it's very fair of me to be especially mean about their Our Skyy offerings when they are in line with what the audience has been taught to expect. If the audience likes that more power to them. But for the six shows that I genuinely liked, I had a good time with these.

Like, the weakest shows in this that I had a hard time with on the front end were A Boss and a Babe and Never Let Me Go. And I really liked what Jojo did with Never Let Me Go, and I thought that A Boss and a Babe actually had a really interesting story this time. But I loved The Eclipse and I thought Golf was great with this outing. I thought the cast was great in The Eclipse outing, and I felt like that about Bad Buddy and A Tale of Thousand Stars, and I felt like that about My School President.

I had a great time! It gets a 9 overall. Like, there are quibbles—it's not always the best thing, and it forces you to maybe look back at a show and alter the way you felt about it. And if you'd rather lock the show in a mental prism of where you last left it, maybe don't watch these offerings? But if you grow and change, and you kind of want to imagine what your characters are like if they also grow and change, then maybe it's worth checking out for you.

It's a 9. Highly recommended.

Nini

For you, the score is always about a recommendation. For me, it's always about do I like this? How much do I like this? And for me, for the vast majority of Our Skyy, I fuckin’ loved it. So I also give it a 9. I don't have any caveats about recommending it to anybody or anything like that. I just had, for the most part, a whale of a fucking time. And so, it's a 9! I enjoyed myself!

So kind of in our own form of intertextuality harkening back to our Season 2: Electric Boogaloo episode of the Spring Series, and talking about sequels. So, Ben, after Our Skyy 2, how are you feeling about sequels?

Ben

Enthusiastic? [laughs] I mean, come on, man, like, this was fucking good. We need to think about how these characters stay together. That can be so rewarding to think about and it's good for the audience to think about it.

I hope we see Pat and Pran in 10 years after their little sprout has blossomed, and maybe they're considering something else. I'm totally down to return to characters every couple of years for check-ins. That totally works for me, and I think that there is value in transitioning the types of stories we tell with characters over time, because they're going to face a variety of situations over time, so it can be so, so rewarding for us as viewers to go on those new journeys with them.

Nini

How do I…feel about sequels? Again, it's the same way I always feel. I feel like when there's story still to tell, I'm ready to see it. I'm ready to hear it. And if I feel like there isn't anything left to say, then I'm not interested. That's largely where I landed with the Our Skyy episodes for the most part where I felt like there was story left to tell. I thoroughly enjoyed getting that story and then those, like Star in My Mind, where I felt like there was no story, I wasn’t really interested.

So, do I feel pumped about sequels and the whole idea of following these boys into the “staying together” part of things? Yes, that's something that I'm always going to enjoy, and if that means conflict, I am fine with that. I enjoy watching them navigate that, whether the conflict is minor or major, I am having a blast with that in my mind.

And…I can't wait for Our Skyy 3.

That is going to wrap us up on the Our Skyy 2 episode. Y'all are going to hear the edited version of this, but I just want you all to know that we've been talking for three hours, and we've been having a great time. See y’all in the next one. Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Welcome back, my boyfriend!

Nini

[laughs] Bye.

#podcast #our skyy 2 #bad buddy #a tale of thousand stars #my school president #the eclipse #vice versa #star in my mind #never let me go #a boss and a babe #thai bl #bl series #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #season 3 #summer 2023 #summer series #Spotify

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